The Music of the Deaf

When I was a student at UCSD in the early 2000’s, I took a linguistics course on "Sign Language and Its Culture." This was an introductory linguistics course, which I was taking only to fulfill a credit. I had no real expectations for the class, but the course title alone contained an idea new to me. For whatever reason, I had never before then even considered that there could be such a thing as a distinct culture of sign language.

I could only imagine how great a loss it would have felt to me personally, if ever I were to lose my own sense of hearing, and that would lead me to thinking how unfortunate it must be to be deaf. Unenlightened as I was, I pictured a hypothetical deaf person being basically like myself (an American male, let's say, with whom I might have many other things in common), only they would be "missing" that one sense, consequently rendering them an "incomplete" version of me. I never quite articulated it in those terms, but that was, if only subconsciously, nevertheless how I perceived things, even gifted as I was with my full five traditional senses.

In my ignorance, it never occurred to me that this attitude of mine was shallow, insensitive, perhaps even offensive. The professor of that class, David Perlmutter, didn't hold it against me, nor against, indeed, the majority of students, who simply didn't know any better. That was why he was here, after all—to educate us.

Perlmutter's most memorable lesson for us was an anecdote out of his conversations with the deaf community. Suppose there were a magic pill that could instantly make a deaf person able to hear. As Perlmutter recounted, when asked if they would take such a pill, one deaf individual, rather than answering, turned the question around and asked, "Would you, as a hearing person, ever take a pill that would make you deaf?" And he continued: "Or, as an American, would you ever take a pill that would make you French?"

Their position was clear enough: they did not regard their deafness as a condition in need of a cure, any more than being French could be considered an affliction. Being deaf did not make them less able, in most every way that counted. If there were certain things they could not do that some hearing people could, well, there are a great many things that I can't do that some hearing people can, or, for that matter, that some deaf people can—compose a symphony, for example, or compete in the Olympics. Deaf people are no less able to enjoy community or to produce culture and art. And if the culture particular to the deaf community ever seems unconventional to outsiders, is it any less the case that, say, French cuisine might seem strange and foreign to someone from Kansas?

Not everyone was entirely convinced by Perlmutter's lesson, as there was some audible scoffing coming from the back of the lecture hall. I should mention again that this was an introductory course; the material, easy and intended for general consumption, leaned toward politically correct feel-good answers over relentless challenging inquiry. Although I say I came out of that class more enlightened than I went in, and certainly more knowledgeable, still there were many fair questions raised and not answered.

Setting aside the magic pills, some saw a flaw in the reasoning put forward by that proud member of the deaf community. Was their culture truly "deaf culture"? Or was it rather, as even the title of the course suggested, "the culture of sign language"? If it was the latter, then the deaf person would indeed seem to be at a disadvantage. A determined hearing person could eventually become fluent in sign language, and thereby assimilate its culture, but a deaf person could never appreciate sounds in the same way that a hearing person could.

Professor Perlmutter himself seemed to be the case in point, a hearing person who was the resident expert on the culture of sign language. He had studied sign language, engaged with the deaf community, and developed an appreciation for their art. Perlmutter did take a step back to remind us that he was not deaf, and that he in no way fancied himself qualified to represent the deaf community. Still, he was the one here gushing to us about how beautiful was “the music of the deaf." What could he know of it, without being deaf himself? And if he, a hearing person, could appreciate it well enough to find it beautiful, didn't that only undermine the deaf person's position that there might be something to lose in becoming hearing?

For me personally, there was no concept in that class more difficult to grasp than this idea of “the music of the deaf.” Beyond mentioning that it existed and insisting that it was beautiful, Perlmutter did not oblige us with a demonstration or even a video. I suppose it was somewhat outside the scope of that linguistics course.

I thought of Beethoven, of course, although he was never mentioned in the class, and truthfully probably was not relevant to a course on the culture of sign language. Beethoven began to lose his hearing as an adult, only becoming mostly deaf toward the end of his life, after he was already an accomplished composer. He continued to produce brilliant works during that later period, but I don’t think this was the “music of the deaf” that Perlmutter was talking about. Beethoven knew what it was to hear music. I imagined he could still use his knowledge and memory as a reference for his later compositions. He would be able to “hear” a note in his mind, even if his ears no longer served.

I wondered, what was it like for someone who was born deaf? They might still be able to appreciate music, maybe even be able to compose. They could experience the vibrational variations of the sound, and perhaps they could process the math in their minds to produce… something unknowable to me. I did not think I could ever know what a deaf composer’s music “sounded” like to them, nor could they know what their compositions sounded like to me. (To be fair, I don’t think I could ever know what a hearing composer’s music really sounds like to them, either, only what it sounds like to me.)

But I think what Perlmutter was really talking about was song—not deaf composers writing “hearing people’s music,” but deaf musicians singing lyrics through sign language, perhaps unaccompanied by any sound at all, primarily for the appreciation of deaf audiences. This was a vastly more difficult concept for me to grasp, because, to me, music could not be separated from sound. You could sign the lyrics to a song, but, without the music, it was just words, poetry. Hearing people had poetry too, but a poem was not a song. I just didn’t get it.

A few weeks back, however, I was attending an OK Go concert (House of Blues San Diego, May 1, 2015), and I noticed there was a woman, not on the stage but next to it, who appeared to be interpreting the show into sign language. She was standing on a small platform off to the side, in front of a party of concertgoers, who, I observed, were conversing with one another through sign language. Transfixed, I watched her for a couple songs, and thought at last that I understood this “music of the deaf.”

https://youtu.be/vN2mduEBsPE

It’s not just signed lyrics, not just words; there’s a musicality to her every movement. You can contrast her performance of the song against the middle portion of the video, where she’s interpreting the band’s non-musical banter with the crowd. When she is interpreting speech, her signing is still expressive, of course, but there is not the same rhythm, not the "melody," that accompanies her interpretation of the music.

So, there we have it?

Honestly, I still have no idea. This was not an original deaf composition but an interpretation of a hearing song, so I don’t know if it counts as an example of deaf music. Also, I was fully capable of hearing the live band, so I was not appreciating the sign language performance on its own. I also don’t know if the interpreter herself was deaf, though I’m guessing not. She actually switched off every few songs with another lady, who I’m sure was hearing, because I saw her speaking with the venue staff. The woman in the video? I just can’t say for certain. In any case, I’m obviously not qualified to assess her fluency. I don’t even know if it matters.

Maybe I’m just not capable of appreciating deaf music. Maybe that’s something I’ll just have to resign myself to missing out on because I’m not deaf.

One final observation: the group that the interpreter was performing for was cheering and dancing and drinking, and overall seemed to enjoy the show just like any other concertgoers. In the middle of one song, however, two ladies started signing to one another, and it became a rather drawn-out conversation. It was clear that they were not paying attention to the performance, until finally another of their companions seemed to call them out for being rude. Seeing them conversing, I was actually a little envious, because I can’t usually even hear myself speak under the loudness of the music at these shows. Of course, I guess I’m not supposed to be talking anyway, because the whole point is to hear the music, not myself. It also made me think, maybe these distracted ladies just weren’t that into the performance. So maybe it wasn’t that great an example of deaf music.

The Wrong Side of 30

The following is fiction... maybe.

"How is it that I work fewer hours now than I ever have at any other point in my adult life, and at a job that is pretty easy, and which I enjoy probably more than any other job I've ever had, and yet, every day, once my shift is up, I feel completely drained, and all I want to do is go home and go to sleep in the middle of the day? I mean, I'd like to be more productive, but my body just wants to shut down. I just don't understand why it shuts down so much more quickly these days."

"Welcome to the wrong side of 30," they tell me.

It is true that this "affliction" seemed to begin right after I turned 31, which was also around when I started this job. And yet, that can't be the reason. It should not be the case that a man should become so useless so suddenly with still so many years left to go. I'm not even middle-aged yet! No, rather....

"I'm sorry," I say. "I zoned out there for a bit."

"You've been asleep for two hours."

Yes, it's a workday. That sounds about right.

Killer App

I received the solemn news the other day that my PlayStation 3, the 80GB model with the PS2 backward compatibility, had died mid-game. My sister had been in the middle of playing the recently released Tales of Xillia 2, when apparently the system froze upon loading a battle. She had tried to resuscitate it to no avail. After she called me over to take a look, I observed that the red light was blinking, but the game wasn’t on. When I attempted to reboot it, a solid red light turned briefly to green, then for a split-second to yellow, before blinking red again. A bit of research told me that, after six years of service, the system had succumbed to the dreaded “yellow light of death” that has marked the demise of so many PS3s past a certain age.

It was bitter news, indeed. I had heard reports before of how widespread the issue was, yet still somehow never believed that it could happen to me. I had heard similar reports against the PS2 in its day, but this was the first PlayStation product to die on me through three generations, during which time I had lost a GameCube, an Xbox 360, and a DS Lite. This meant that all three major console makers had failed me now, leaving little for me to believe in.

Thinking back, it occurs to me now that the GameCube had crapped out while my siblings and I had been in the middle of playing Tales of Symphonia ten years ago. That was a great game, the first Tales any of us had played (I personally wasn’t able to stick with the series very long after that), and maybe the most unified my siblings and I had ever been in our investment in any game we’d played together. We were right in the middle of the story, too, when the GameCube, which was then less than two years old, lost its ability to reliably read discs, and, with no real way to fix it ourselves, we just had to buy a brand new GameCube. Internally, I think we were all quite mad at Nintendo for putting out such shoddy hardware, but we couldn’t let those negative thoughts dampen our positive enthusiasm for the game, and so we played on, enjoyed ourselves, and never really properly grieved/griped over the injustice done unto us.

Now, as much as I enjoyed Tales of Symphonia, I would just as soon never stick another Tales game in any of my disc drives, if the series is evidently such a serial system killer.

*Sigh* I kid, because, right now, I can’t even wrap my mind around the reality of it all.

That PS3 lasted six years, which, in fairness, might have been longer than the active life of any of my other consoles. (Actually, no, I was still playing Persona 3 on my PS2 some eight years into that machine’s life, and I reckon it still works today, though I haven’t turned it on in about four years.) It was not a launch model. It was the 2008 80GB model that came bundled with Metal Gear Solid 4 on the game’s release date. This was reportedly to be the last model to include any kind of backward compatibility with PS2 games, which raised its value considerably for any enthusiast who had so far held out on buying a PS3. Supply might not meet demand was the word, and so, on release day, I headed out early on a workday to wait outside Walmart until store’s opening at 6:00 AM.

A few other people got there as early as I did. There were two guys there together, who looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. A heavyset biker dude in a denim vest and bandanna kept to himself. And an older white-haired gentleman was standing impatiently to the side. There were also a few middle-aged Latina ladies, who I gathered spoke limited English, but it was the four aforementioned males that I supposed to be the guys I might have to outrace to the video games department. One of the young guys, in fact, was telling the other about all the different models of the PS3, so there was little doubt that they were there for the same thing I was.

Finally, a Walmart employee unlocked the doors, and the Latina ladies dispersed, while, sure enough, we males all headed in the same direction. There were no words exchanged, nor any eye contact. We didn’t want to get to know each other, in case it turned out we would have to fight over a limited number of PS3s. But, even though I think we all knew this might be a race, still nobody was actually running. We were all just walking somewhat quickly in the same direction, separately but in a tight cluster.

I wasn’t quite first to the racks, and, to my dismay, there was only one PS3 behind the glass. Of course, we still had to wait another while yet for assistance, and the employee who arrived would have no idea who was “first,” but still I would have honored the order if it had come down to that.

The biker dude claimed the PS3, but the young guy—the one who had been detailing the different models, first to his buddy, then to the older fellow (some kid’s clueless dad, it turned out) as we had been waiting for assistance—immediately inquired if there were any more in the back. The Walmart employee said yes, and asked how many we needed. The same young guy answered for everyone: none for himself but one for his buddy, one for the kid’s dad, and, (after shooting me a glance, which I answered with a nod) he added, one for me. So everybody got one, and we then parted company, as though (I like to imagine) having been to war together.

The bundle was $500 (plus tax)—an outrageous price, even up against today’s consoles—but Walmart was including a $100 gift card with purchase. I stowed mine in the trunk of my car, then proceeded to head off on my forty-minute commute to work.

Even considering the price, I never really regretted that purchase. I bought the PS3 specifically to play Metal Gear Solid 4, billed as the conclusion to the saga that was maybe my favorite video game series of the time. It was the killer app I’d been waiting for, so to speak, and I wanted to be sure to play it before the Internet could spoil the story for me. A few weeks later, and the very next day after I completed it, I left for Anime Expo. At one point, I was waiting in line to see none other than David Hayter himself, and some guy in line was describing the entire plot of the game in explicit detail to his buddy ("So it turns out they were all the Patriots!"), who seemed to be only half-listening. (I got the impression the buddy had never played any game in the series, in which case, I wonder, how could this extensive plot summary have even meant anything to him? Or, if he had played the game, why was the other guy recounting every plot point to him, as if he didn't already know the story?). Of course, during the panel, Hayter himself would hold back no spoilers, so, to me, it was worth the cost of the system to have been able to play the game before all that.

Now, six years later, it’s all gone.

The most infuriating part is that, even now, a new PS3 is not affordable. A 500GB model goes for $269 (plus tax), at a time in my life when I make about half what I was pulling in six years ago. These are the expenses that you don’t see coming and thus can’t budget for, but which I also can’t really put off for long, for the same reasons my siblings and I couldn’t put Tales of Symphonia on hold ten years ago. Speaking just for myself, it may not be my livelihood, in the sense that playing games doesn’t earn me even a cent (while costing me quite a lot), and yet gaming (and then talking and writing about the games I play) is, in all seriousness, a major motivation in my life, without which I would feel far less productive. So I know, at most, I can dilly-dally and agonize over it a few days (basically, until the next billing cycle on my credit card, around which I plan my monthly budget), before ultimately I’ll have to plunk down that money.

I would just buy a PlayStation 4 at this point, except it has no backward compatibility whatsoever, and it so happens that there are no PS4 games I’m currently interested in, whereas I already own a ton of PS3 games that I have yet to play. Hell, I even have a large backlog of PS2 games to get through. I guess, if I’m ever to play those, I’ll have to dust off the PS2 (and the old memory cards and controller), since backward compatibility on the PS3 died along with my 80GB model. Truthfully, I rarely took advantage of the PS2 compatibility, first because I knew it wasn’t perfect, and later because I simply wasn’t playing PS2 games, period. I did use the backward compatibility any time I wanted to check a PS2 game for reference in recent years. Mostly, it’s just a huge bummer that I won’t even have that option anymore.

Even as I complain about the prospect of having to fiddle around with PS2 memory cards again, another pain attached to this PS3 failure is the loss of my data on the hard drive, which, for all its convenience, seems in hindsight less reliable than memory cards. Now all my PS3 game saves are inaccessible, which may not be a huge loss, since I don’t think I was in the middle of anything (but the full scope of the loss is one of the things I haven’t yet been able to wrap my mind around). I had many digital games also, which I guess I could always download again on a new system. Still, what a pain.

Christ, the Tales of Xillia 2 disc is still stuck inside there! That never would have happened on any of the cartridge-based systems, nor on the PS1. Even the PS2 and the Xbox 360, which use sliding disc trays would probably be easier to jimmy open. Now, I may have to attempt some sort of blow-dryer or oven-based short-term home remedy, just to get the disc out and hopefully recover some of my data.

You Can't Handle the Truth about Santa

A child asks me, in earnest, "Is Santa Claus real?"

How does one respond?

Personally, I can't remember a time in my life when I ever believed in Santa Claus. It's not how I was raised, which is not to say that my family doesn't get festive during the holiday season. But, when I was a child and my parents were buying me Christmas presents, they would always ask me directly not simply what I hoped to get but what specifically I wanted them to get for me. Then, when they went to the store to buy the presents, I would accompany them to help make sure they picked out the right ones. So, no, Santa was not a part of my family's traditions when I was growing up.

I honestly think it's better that way. Kids don't come out of the womb believing in Santa by default. It's probably not even until they're about three or four years old, at the youngest, that they're able to process this idea of a jolly fat man from the North Pole, who rides around the globe on a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer, and comes down the chimney to deliver your Christmas presents while you sleep. It's not an intuitive concept, and I don't know what it serves to teach children this elaborate lie. When they inevitably discover the truth, most likely in traumatic fashion, the only lesson there is that no one can be trusted, not even the people closest to them, their parents, whom they were supposed to be able to count on most, but who, it turns out, masterminded this grotesque falsehood, perpetrated for years precisely to fool their own children.

I asked around a bit to see what other people thought.

A friend of mine, D, a single mother who works as a bartender, insists that the correct response, when asked by kids about Santa, is always to answer that he is real. With a five-year-old of her own, she perpetuates the myth in nearly its entirety—presents under the tree, letters to the North Pole, "naughty or nice" list, cookies for Santa. But she's careful to make the distinction to her son that the "Santa" at the mall, with whom other kids are taking pictures, is a fraud. Likewise are any Santas on TV. After all, if her son started observing multiple Santa actors and catching on that they were not all the same man, it might blow the lid on the whole operation.

When I shared with D my opinion on the matter, she argued that, not being a parent myself, I wouldn't be able to understand. I wouldn't be able to understand how a mother would do anything to guard her child. Now, I would never tell a parent how to do their job, but I wasn't sure what D was "guarding" in this case. She said it was her son's "sense of wonder."

"Let them have that, while they're still young," she said, "before they have to grow up and learn how crappy the world really is."

I still stood by a policy of truth, and I maintained that teaching kids the Santa lie would only make reality that much more devastating for them when eventually they learned the truth.

I suspected that, rather than serving the kids, the Santa story existed more to help parents to get their kids to behave well. Children are warned not to get on Santa's naughty list, or else they might not get what they want for Christmas. My friend D even keeps an "Elf on the Shelf" in her home. For those not in the know, this is a more recent invention, a doll of a Christmas elf, which parents place up on a high shelf, telling their kids that the doll is actually alive and keeping tabs on their behavior, serving as Santa's eyes and ears in the home. You can move the elf around the house when the kids aren't looking, in order to aid in the illusion that this limp doll is alive, but many parents are content just to do the bare minimum of putting the elf on the shelf, explaining its job to the kids and warning them that they must not try to touch it (or else it will lose its magic and get very sick!), then letting it passively go to work keeping the kids on their best behavior. I find it all quite cynical, and I'm not sure if even the very young kids are really fooled by this elf doll, or if they just play along, thinking it a game.

As far as guarding the kids' sense of wonder, I say that we ought always encourage children (and adults) to wonder and make serious inquiry when confronted with tales that offend their faculty of reason, especially when it is coming from those who would assume authority over them. I say, if a child has attained the intellectual honesty to question, then perhaps they deserve to be rewarded with an honest answer in response. If they're asking whether Santa is real, then it must mean that they already have doubts, in which case I might consider them ready to know the truth—that all they have been told is lies.

Another friend of mine, C, a lawyer and anarchist, has a different opinion on the matter. Although her parents did the "presents appear overnight under the tree" thing, she says they would always give her coy answers whenever she asked where the gifts came from, or whether Santa was real. The idea of Santa, which came to C from her classmates and from media, was something that was neither encouraged nor discouraged within her anarchist household. Rather than tell her what to believe, C's parents taught her to investigate and make up her own mind in all matters.

I had to think about this one. Although I feel it would be rather irritating for a child to never be able to get a straight answer from their own parents, maybe there is something more to be gained from earning one's own truth.

I asked one more friend, A, a young Jewish mother. Her response: "I'm Jewish. We don't have Santa Claus."

I'm not sure how accurate that is. Santa has only, at best, a tenuous connection to Christianity. Here in the U.S., he's more a commercial concoction and seasonal icon, open to being celebrated by all materialistic Americans. But, yes, the traditional Santa story does revolve around Christmas, and if one is determined not to observe that holiday in any way, then probably Santa is a no-go.

Thus, even at the age where a kid is most susceptible to the Santa Claus myth, there will be some who have already been taught explicitly by their parents that Santa is not real. The key point there is that, if parents want their children believing one way or the other about Santa, then it's the parents' own job to enforce that. The kid who asked me about Santa was not my kid, so it was not my responsibility to tell him what to believe.

Mr. G, who works as an elementary school teacher and consequently has to deal with this question all the time, tells me the trick is to ask the kid back, "What do your parents say?" Then Mr. G simply tells that kid to listen to their parents. It's a diplomatic response that is meant to ruffle no feathers (i.e. covers his ass against angry parents).

There was one more dimension to this dilemma that I perceived. As already established, the lies told one kid at home may not be in harmony with what other kids have been taught. And, this being the United States of America, kids also talk to one another, sometimes across cultural lines. They might even get into playground debates over whether Santa is real. In that case, it's really not desirable for an adult, who is not a parent, but who might nevertheless be recognized and cited by the children as an authority on the matter, to even be seen as implicitly supporting one side over the other, and then have that inadvertently fueling the fire of this schoolyard argument, ultimately multiplying your problems, when the news gets back to the kids' parents.

In the end, I think the best response is precisely the one I gave: "I don't have time for this."

The Mowgli's, Blondfire - The Griffin, December 12, 2013

I caught The Mowgli's when their "Random Acts of Kindness Tour" made its way to San Diego at The Griffin last Thursday, December 12, 2013. Opening for them on this tour was Blondfire, which was the band I was primarily going to see.

I quite enjoyed Blondfire's 2012 EP, Where the Kids Are, whose title track was featured in a Honda Civic TV ad earlier this year. Fronted by Erica Driscoll (who formed Blondfire together with her brother Bruce, who unfortunately no longer tours), their propulsive sound resembles a dreamier take on The Cardigans, or perhaps Metric with more sweetness.

It occurred to me too late, but it's not a sound, infectious as it is, that lends itself especially well to live performance. Many of Blondfire's catchier songs are made so by the synth elements, which, at this show, were just recorded tracks, nullifying much of the "live" element. And the songs are not especially on the lively side to begin with, so, although Driscoll and the band performed decently, the performance was just not energizing but almost rather the opposite. The stream of like-sounding songs started to have a tranquilizing effect on me, and I was only roused when Driscoll announced that she was going to play one of her favorites, which turned out not even to be a Blondfire song but a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams."

I would have rather she had dug out their own best-known (and simply best) song from the band's earlier days, "L-L-Love," which was apparently featured in the movies Monster-in-Law (2005), Mozart and the Whale (2005), and, um, Bangkok Dangerous (2008). But she didn't play any of their older songs or even really make reference to Blondfire's history (like, back when they used to go by Astaire), other than to mention that their new album has been a long time in the making. Blondfire basically just showed up, gave a mostly unassuming performance, and then left the stage for The Mowgli's. Maybe, since they weren't the headliners, they didn't feel the need to put their best into their set and performance. At any rate, I still like Blondfire's music and am looking forward to their album.

The slightly disappointing performance from Blondfire did mean I needed The Mowgli's to be a lot better than I anticipated. Originally, I expected The Mowgli's would just be a bonus, as I did enjoy their one hit song, "San Francisco." Now, I was suddenly depending on them to be amazing, in order to justify the above-average price I had paid for my ticket. Fortunately, The Mowgli's did put on a great show, even if I couldn't recall any of their other songs once it was over.

The Mowgli's are an eight-piece band, which meant that small Griffin stage got pretty crowded. For such a large ensemble, their sound is not notably huge or intricate. Rather than yielding anything artistically or technically virtuous, the band's lineup more just supports its inclusive image as some love-loving peacenik collective. I don't know if it's really all that calculated, but I'm personally suspicious of any characters who would get up on a stage, as part of some "Random Acts of Kindness Tour," and dispense fuzzy messages about spreading love and making the world a better place.

Midway into The Mowgli's set, a giant drunk forced his way through the crowd to the front row, placing himself between two girls who were together but were thereafter separated for the rest of the night. As he gestured vigorously toward the stage with finger pistols, swimming motions, and flipping the bird, I wondered whether anyone would step up to try to deal with this jackass, but people's fear seemed to overtake their disapproval. I could see it in their eyes that the band members too had observed how boorish this guy was, but, not wanting to escalate a potentially volatile situation, they just tried to play it off as people having a wild good time, complimenting the guy's energy. Thus encouraged, the guy then pressed onward to rub the belly of one of the male vocalists who had gotten too close to the edge of the stage.

I thought to myself, this would be a moment of truth for these professed love-lovers. Would they recoil in disgust, or could they really be as cool yet warm as the words they put forth? The belly-rub had taken the musician by surprise; I perceived him hesitating that split-second while deciding how to react. Once he gathered himself, however, he did so with a smile and a high-five to the crazy guy. The hesitation told me one thing, but, ultimately, the smile and high-five told me more. Calculated or not, they were committed to this image, and able to put it ahead of any reflexive disgust. That was enough to impress me. After all, I consider "good" more a matter of effort than of nature.

Thereafter, the crazy guy would continue to grab at any band member who got within striking distance, even gripping the wrist of that same vocalist, who was, at that very moment, trying to play the guitar. Again, I could perceive some perturbation in the musician's brow, but he played on and then afterward gave the crazy guy another slap of affection. I honestly believe this crazy guy would have, given the chance, tried the same on the female band member or on Blondfire's Erica Driscoll, and I bet things would have gone a lot uglier in those cases, but luckily they never opened themselves up to that.

The Mowgli's played several songs. I don't know how many or which ones, but it was a very crowd-pleasing set. I find that The Mowgli's, quite the opposite of Blondfire, is an act that only "makes sense" live. I had listened to their album, Waiting for the Dawn (2013), before, and, other than "San Francisco," none of the songs really appealed to me. They were inoffensive but unremarkable. It's different when you see them perform those same songs live, however, because I think a lot of the act's personality isn't actually contained in the music but resides in the group of characters literally jumping around on stage.

It reminds me of when I was in my college writing workshops, and peers would sometimes read my work and question my language or even just claim not to "get it." When I would read aloud in my own voice, however, suddenly it would click and the feedback would be much more positive. Ultimately, it was a failure on my part, if my words couldn't hold up apart from my voice, because, after all, it was my ambition to be a writer, not a spoken-word artist. If I was ever to produce writing to be read on a wider scale, it would have to be with the understanding that I wouldn't be able to personally defend and clarify my work to every single reader.

Similarly, I don't think The Mowgli's music really holds up apart from the live performance—they're just kind of generic and forgettable songs—but, in the right circumstances (i.e. live), they can shine. When the band is hopping and dancing, and punctuating songs with warm words, and some are coming down from the stage to embrace the crowd, or other times inviting audience members (yes, the crazy guy) to join the band on the stage, that's when everything clicks and The Mowgli's seem like the greatest band in the world.

I would question, however, their decision to use "San Francisco" as their show-closer. It's typical, yes, to save your best-known song for last, building anticipation for it through the night. But "San Francisco" is clearly written to be an opener, as it is on Waiting for the Dawn. It announces the band and sets the mood. And The Mowgli's really don't have any other comparably energetic song that can so immediately pump up the crowd. It's just a waste to leave it until the end.

So You Think You Can Dance 2013 Tour

(Update 8/6/2014: The video links are all broken, because Fox or whoever keeps taking down the YouTube user uploads, while providing no official alternatives. If you search for the routines by title, you can usually still find an upload that hasn't been taken down yet, but I won't be updating this post any further with new links.)

I caught the So You Think You Can Dance touring show when it made its way to the San Diego Civic Theatre on November 26, 2013. Featuring contestants from the most recent season of the Fox dance competition show, the live program is basically a months-long victory tour for the dancers who made it into the top 10. Regrettably, I didn't actually get to watch much of Season 10 (2013) on TV, because there's no readily available on-demand stream for it, but I've long considered SYTYCD the best reality competition show on TV—not merely a guilty pleasure like a lot of reality TV, but actually, at its best, a legitimately praiseworthy program that can add to the culture of its mass audience, rather than depreciating it.

At first glance, it just looks like a clone of American Idol, also created by producer Simon Fuller, only focused on dancing instead of singing. Certainly, its format was modeled after Idol's, and, when SYTYCD debuted, the show was marketed as a sister program or even spin-off of Fox's biggest hit at the time. I don't despise American Idol, but I would say that, even at its height, it was a show of limited artistic worth, notwithstanding the handful of successful pop stars and actresses it has produced over the years.

The only part of Idol I ever truly enjoyed was the audition round, partly for the admittedly mean-spirited reason that that was when you would hear the comically hopeless hopefuls, but more so because that was the only time a real contestant could have a genuine "moment" and impress me. I think back to the movie Chariots of Fire (1981), when British Olympic sprinter Harold Abrahams spoke of his "ten lonely seconds to justify my whole existence." An American Idol audition would not be so brief, perhaps not so lonely, but it struck me as the same basic concept in practice. A mostly unremarkable individual—not rich, not famous—would be given this one shot, on the most-watched television program in the country, to prove—to the judges, to the viewers, and, perhaps most of all, to themselves—that they really could do that one thing that they all believed they were meant to do in this world, which was to sing this song that they had probably picked out months in advance and practiced daily in preparation for their audition. For most of them, the audition wouldn't lead to anything bigger; they would never be more relevant to the larger world than during those few soon-to-be-forgotten seconds on TV. Even so, any time a contestant could walk into that audition room and just really nail their one song (which happened far more rarely than the judges would have had viewers believe), I would consider that a moment, and even if it was all they ever got, I would say it was something to be proud of.

I think the audition portion of SYTYCD is also its best part, for mostly the same reasons. The dancers are not yet performing in the context of a competition and being judged against others, and they're not yet having to learn other people's choreography under intense pressure and in styles they've perhaps never attempted before. The routines might not have the most involved narrative arcs, but the level of artistic expression, on the part of the dancers themselves, is more honest and authentic than what comes later. They're showing the judges and the viewers their real selves, instead of who some professional choreographer is telling them to be, or what they think people want to see. And, whereas even the "moments" on American Idol would, truthfully, rarely be objectively superb vocal performances, but merely admirable in an "I can tell you really put your heart and soul into that" sort of way, the auditions on SYTYCD include numerous dancers who, prior to appearing on the show, have already proven themselves as practitioners of their respective styles on a national or even international level. Then there are also the dancers repping styles outside the mainstream—things like Mongolian bowl dancing—with their SYTYCD audition serving as perhaps the first time the style has received exposure before a large American television audience. The show has now been running for 10 seasons, and still every year I see things I've never seen before.

I do feel the audition portion is the purest and best part of SYTYCD, but, unlike Idol, the show is still worth watching even after it enters the live rounds of contestants competing for viewers' votes. Again, all of the finalists are extraordinarily talented, but, for all that, perhaps what's just as impressive is how humble, rather than entitled, everyone is. Part of it must be that the experience itself is humbling, but the truth is that nobody makes it that far into the competition without a humble attitude to begin with, because nobody gets to be that good, even just to make it to the live rounds, without understanding that success in dance comes down to a ridiculous amount of hard work. Well, I do personally enjoy the jazz and musical theatre dancers least, because I feel those dancers get by more on personality than on well-honed technique. And I don't much care for the tap dancers, because... well, I just don't like tap. But the other thing that all of the top dancers have in common, no matter their style, is a genuine passion for dance. The people who go far on SYTYCD don't go on the show because they principally want to become famous; the most stardom any contestant is going to get out of appearing on the show is a role in one of those Step Up movies, or if you're a ballroom dancer, maybe a job as one of the professionals on Dancing with the Stars. No, the people who go far on SYTYCD go on the show because they truly love dance, whether it's ballroom, street, ballet, jazz, modern, etc. And, as much as they all want to show off their own strengths and techniques, they also want to work with the award-winning choreographers, to learn different forms and styles, to be challenged to do things they haven't done before. So, although pairing a breakdancer with a contemporary ballet dancer to take on a jive routine may not yield a flattering exhibition of Latin dance (in fact, the Latin ballroom routines on this show, when performed by non-ballroom dancers, are probably my least favorite, even beneath the Broadway routines), even in such a case, one can appreciate that these contestants are really trying, they're not making excuses, and they're still performing better than the vast majority of us. In other words, SYTYCD at its worst still offers basically what other "inspiring" reality competition shows do at their best.

Now, to speak more specifically about the touring show that I attended, I did find it a very strange program, and I came away somewhat disappointed. Because I didn't follow this season on TV that closely, I wasn't that familiar with most of the dancers. So, when they introduced the top 10 who were touring, my initial reaction was disappointment at discovering that the one Season 10 dancer that really stood out from the random episodes I caught, animator Dorian "BluPrint" Hector, evidently didn't even make it that far and would not be performing that night. Among the top 10 dancers (plus four more invitees) who were in the house, I only recognized the four that made it to the final round. Everybody was still very good, of course, so if technique is what counts, then there was plenty enough on display, even if they didn't seem quite so sharp as during the televised competition.

The show opened with a scaled down version of the hip hop group number, "Puttin' on the Ritz," that originally opened Week 1 of the finals. The TV version, featuring the top 20 dancers and numerous guests, was done as a three-minute uninterrupted long take that began with the dancers arriving at the parking lot, then dancing their way through the studio and wardrobe changes, eventually finishing on the main stage. Choreographed by Tabitha and Napoleon D'umo (together known as Nappytabs), the routine was conceptually recycled ("adapted," if you prefer) from their earlier work this year on Herb Alpert's "Puttin' on the Ritz" music video (although the SYTYCD version had the added challenge of having to be done on live TV), but it was still the most epic dance routine on television this year—in my opinion, one of the cooler moments on all of television this year.

http://youtu.be/CeHPCQRvcw4

The touring version was, well, missing most of what made the TV version great—the element of ingenuity, the wardrobe changes, six of the dancers and all of the guests. It was just a straightforward group number. Group numbers do tend to be my favorites, particularly when the choreography finds ways to play to each dancer's unique strengths, so this was still entertaining.

After "Puttin' on the Ritz," Season 10 winners Amy Yakima and Du-Shaunt "Fik-Shun" Stegall briefly spoke a few rehearsed lines to introduce the show. I don't know what I was expecting, but the lack of any real host or emcee took me by surprise. I hadn't expected TV host Cat Deeley to be there, but her absence was strangely jarring and made me realize how important it is to have someone like that providing context. Creator and judge Nigel Lythgoe was also not there, and, in fact, aside from the dancers, none of the people from the TV show were there, except for judge Mary Murphy, who sat down in the front row to tremendous applause from the audience but received no official acknowledgment from the stage. I think she was just there because she's local to San Diego.

Amy and Fik-Shun spoke again to close the show, but the dancers otherwise never said anything. The only context for any of the routines came every couple of dances in the form of a taped intro by one of the choreographers, who would talk about themselves and about their routine, almost never about the dancers. Oh, and each of the top 10 dancers also performed a solo, which would be the only time they would be introduced by name. The rest of the time, I had a hard time telling dancers apart. Yes, partly this was due to my not having seen that much of this season on TV. And I suppose the fact that, most of the time, I couldn't tell whether a dancer was doing their own style probably spoke well of how far they'd come in learning different genres.

So the dancing was good and the choreography was good. What was missing was personality, which I myself implied earlier was less critical than technique. I suppose one's enjoyment of the touring show depends upon what one watches the TV show for—the contestants, the choreographers, or dancing itself. The touring show highlights the latter two, while perhaps slighting the first. You do see the dancers show off their talent, and it is impressive, but at the same time, as people, they are rendered somewhat anonymous. They don't speak, they aren't introduced or even named most of the time, and, from the audience, it's sometimes hard to tell who's who. On TV, when the dancers introduce themselves with some sob story about what they're dancing for, a cynic might argue that it's manipulative, but, without any of that packaging, it all just feels somewhat cold and detached. Everything is so rigidly structured—dancers on stage, dancers off stage, next dancers on, video, repeat—that it's hard to tell if the dancers are even enjoying themselves, or if they're just going through the motions, performing the same routines for the umpteenth time on this months-long tour.

It's not an experience I can recommend, unless you already spent a lot of time following that specific group of dancers on the show. The only advantage to seeing them live is that you don't have to deal with the occasionally frustrating editing on the TV show, which sometimes cuts away in the middle of a good number in order to show the judges' reactions, instead of letting viewers see for themselves what the judges are reacting to. The other cool bit to the touring show was how routines sometimes faded into one another, with one dance's end overlapping with another's beginning, and with the dancers dressed in matching themes, even if the routines originally were unrelated.

As for other highlights, once the show was over, I had already forgotten most of the routines, except for "Puttin' on the Ritz" and Chris Scott's "Sand," which originally featured the top 10 guys but was here modified to include the girls in place of the missing guys. The one other routine that stood out was Travis Wall's "Medicine." Although it's not one of my favorite routines of all time, one criticism I've long had about SYTYCD is how doggedly it conforms to traditional gender narratives. For most of the competition, dancers are paired off, one male to one female, and the choreography most often plays up the girl as desirable, the guy as in pursuit of her. Even as many of the male contestants may be gay—even openly so, as Travis Wall himself is—the show basically never acknowledges the possibility, instead repeatedly emphasizing sexual chemistry as an important part of any male-female routine. Near the end of the competition, they'll experiment with more unconventional same-sex pairings, and the guy-guy pairings are almost always framed as battles, while, in girl-girl routines, the females often don't play characters at all but may be more symbolic, representing the female gender itself or some abstract concept. It's almost never just a guy and a girl who aren't in lust, or just two guys who aren't trying to one-up one another, or just a human girl and another human girl. So the "Medicine" routine is unique and somewhat refreshing, as it is a male-male dance, where the two guys are equals with clearly a strong and positive emotional connection.

http://youtu.be/7QDp2FK47X0

The behind-the-scenes story to this routine was that the original two performers, Season 10 contestant Tucker Knox (who didn't make top 10 and was brought on tour probably specifically to perform this dance) and SYTYCD "All-Star" Robert Roldan, were both survivors of nearly fatal accidents. Roldan, in fact, was just coming back to SYTYCD after having suffered a potentially career-ending injury since his time as a contestant on Season 7. For the touring show, no All-Stars were brought along, so one of the Season 10 guys took Roldan's place. I don't remember who.

I'll wait for the Nintendo 4DS for adults

So Nintendo and GameStop have partnered again to distribute rare Pokemon for download at GameStop stores across America, which means it's time once again for me to visit the Starbucks next door to my local GameStop, then pretend to be working on my laptop, while, underneath the table, I discreetly have my all-black DS Lite turned on and ready to wirelessly receive the shiny Dialga. And I'll have to do this twice more over the coming weeks, since they'll be distributing a shiny Palkia and a shiny Giratina as well.

Yes, it's all quite aggravating (among other words that you might apply to my situation as a grown man making a trip out specifically to acquire a digital monster). But I won't be manipulated into going into GameStop, where I would have no intention of spending money, and where I would assuredly be the only adult there not at all hidden in the corner to download a rare Pokemon, shaking my head and trying to avoid eye contact as the employees ask if I need any help. And, unfortunately, their wireless transmitter (actually just a DS of their own) isn't strong enough for me to pull this off from my car in the parking lot, so heading into Starbucks is the only way to go.

And my black DS Lite—once upon a time, it was as professional-looking as any handheld electronic device out there. Now, it just looks like another huge Nintendo toy. So, under the table it goes.

And here Nintendo comes again trying to up the ante, with its newly announced 2DS handheld, for tech that one would be embarrassed to be seen in public with. I know it's not marketed toward me, and I'm not saying I don't see the sense in it. But... damn! On the one hand, I actually kind of want one. If it's more comfortable to hold than their clamshell designs of the last few years, which have indeed left much to be desired ergonomically, then that would be a pretty big deal to me. That price, meanwhile, is quite the deal, period. In this economy, those savings are not inconsequential for anyone in the market for a 3DS. On the other hand, I would be absolutely embarrassed to be seen playing that thing in public, or even in private.

Seriously, when will Nintendo have the sense to design for adults a grown-up piece of hardware that we won't be embarrassed to carry around in public while heading out to download rare Pokemon? Seriously!

Does the slave choose?

Some of the older ladies at work were discussing "Meatless Mondays," which a San Diego school district had recently voted to institute for public school lunches. It was a surprise to hear my coworkers discussing such a relatively low-profile local political news item because... well, because, they being working class immigrants, I did not expect them to be so well-informed. That was my first lesson.

The second lesson was that you don't need to be a Ron Paul-esque rich white male to espouse libertarian views. To a woman, they were all opposed to the city enforcing Meatless Mondays in public schools. I was skeptical of their grasp of the dietary implications (and I myself would not claim any expertise on nutrition), but even those who conceded that going vegetarian at least one day out of the week might be beneficial to kids' health were opposed, on principle, to the government stepping in and making the decision for them.

"The choice should be ours," one lady defiantly asserted.

Yes, the problem was choice. (And, yes, perhaps quoting The Matrix Reloaded is not going to strengthen whatever point I'm about to make, especially as the quote probably isn't even relevant. I just like it as my go-to line on choice.)

The conversation shortly thereafter derailed into whispered discussion over whether specific coworkers not present qualified as obese. Before it sank to that point, I asked, just to make sure, whether any of them would ever choose to go Meatless Mondays, and if not, why not. I was genuinely curious to know what they thought. So many among those who pushed for Meatless Mondays for San Diego public schools were actually younger white folks with no kids. Meanwhile, here seemed to me a chance for an informative look into the views and opinions of those most directly affected by the recent vote: working class parents of minority public school students, who depend on free and reduced-price meals for much of their daily nourishment.

As it turned out, once again to a woman, they all stated that they would not go Meatless Mondays. I must say, however, that, this time around, their responses sounded more like sheepish rationalizing than the haymakers they were going for with such confidence before. Some were still insisting that meat was necessary for protein. For the rest, the prevailing argument was that people should eat what they like. Of course, by this point, we had lost sight of the fact that we were talking about their growing kids, not themselves. I suppose it would only have been consistent with their previously expressed opinions if they didn't believe in parents making their kids' decisions for them either, but, to be honest, I myself had lost sight of the kid angle, and so I didn't press on that issue.

In any case, the "do what you like" argument was something that had come up before. Specifically, I had challenged them before on their fondness for casinos, only to be met with "It's just fun. You should enjoy life. As long as you're not hurting anybody, it's okay."

This was a temp job at a manufacturing company, situated in the Filipino part of the city. The labor force for this and almost every other similar company, of which there are dozens in the area, is predominantly Filipino. And, to return to stereotypes and preconceptions, they loved gambling. They played the lottery every week, of course, but they especially loved visiting the casino every weekend. One lady even insisted that, if she ever won the lottery, she would retire and spend every day in the casino.

Previously, I had asked them to consider that, perhaps, if they spent less money on lotto tickets, then maybe they would have enough money saved up to live comfortably without ever needing to do anything so desperate as play the lottery. Likewise, if they simply saved their money, instead of blowing it at the casino, then maybe they would have enough savings that they would never have to do anything so desperate as gamble at the casino.

They assured me that they didn't go to the casino expecting to win anything. They were quite certain that winning was impossible. Instead, it came back to doing what was fun for them, which was casinos. And that was the thing I didn't get. The only point in gambling, as far as I knew, was to try to win money. So if you kept failing at that, then how could the activity possibly be fun?

When I inquired further, they interpreted that as criticism, and that was when they would always try to settle the argument by reasserting that it was their choice. Having fun was how they were choosing to live, and going to the casino was how they were choosing to have fun.

I asked them specifically what made it fun for them, and they seemed rather at a loss how to articulate concrete reasons. One lady offered "The blinking lights are exciting," but I'm not sure she was serious. Finally, they sighed, as though the loss were mine for not being able to appreciate the inexpressible, irreducible joy of gambling. Fair enough. After all, how does one quantify fun?

But I considered my own hobby of choice, video games. Video games also offer blinking lights, but they involve other elements as well: practiced skill, challenging oneself, the pride and satisfaction of seeing oneself progressing and improving at the game. Many games contain stories as well, which can be enjoyed as one enjoys a book or movie. Sure, anything achieved in the game is ultimately erased by the final "failure" that is the eventual end of our mortal existence, so, in that respect, my fun was just as pointless as my casino-loving coworkers'. But I was not interested in getting into an existential debate with a bunch of old ladies who were not native speakers of English (and I had only picked up a handful of Tagalog words, all of them referring to intercourse). The fun of the casino seemed, to me, so temporary. For the money, the fun of video games seemed so much more "real."

Back to choice, though, it really seemed to me that, although they were claiming that they were exercising choice in wasting their time and money at the casino, the fact that they themselves did not seem to know why they enjoyed it suggested to me that this was not truly a meaningful choice they were making. As I saw it, they were being taken advantage of.

Finally, I tried to draw an analogy to drugs. Hard drugs also offer, like the casino, pleasure that is extremely temporary and produce no benefit afterward but are, rather, actually quite damaging to one's health, much as gambling is damaging to one's finances. And drugs, being addictive, actually impair the user's ability to make any choice other than to keep up the habit. So, did they not consider, perhaps, that the casino could also be an addiction, and anybody who is going there literally every weekend may not, at that point, actually have the sound judgment anymore to meaningfully exercise choice? Instead, would they not only be acting as slaves to the addiction?

As I should have anticipated, my questioning, instead of provoking serious thought, only led to them thinking that I was a drug user, and quickly they were trying to lecture me on why using was a harmful habit with no good side (unlike gambling, somehow). Oh well.

It's something I've thought about many times, however, in my more philosophical moments, and the Meatless Mondays thing perhaps even better illustrates the argument. It is all well and good to insist that one should be allowed to make one's own choices on what to eat. But when you choose to go for the fatty delicious food, is that really a choice? Are you not merely acting as slave to your own cravings for food that you know is bad for you? It occurs to me that, given the "choice" between healthy food and junk food, perhaps it is only when opting for the former that one is expressing choice; the latter is impulse. It sounds odd, because, for the old ladies at work, and as perhaps most people understand the concept, "choice" meant being at liberty to decide for oneself how one was going to live. How can it be that, presented with a choice, there might only be one path that properly expresses choice? It seems a contradiction, does it not? That there should be only one way to choose? But perhaps "choice" is not truly about the freedom to pursue many different and comparably valid possibilities but, rather, about having the chance to do the right thing of our own free will, without some overbearing daddy figure stepping in to make all the decisions for us.

And I suppose, in that case, the old ladies' point would stay the same. They're just a bit late, I think, as choice has clearly already passed our obese nation by. Now hooked, we haven't any longer the strength of will to free ourselves from the bondage of deliciousness. Thus, it is left to the healthy-living voting contingent to shepherd us away from our own weaker tendencies. And, anyway, were my libertarian working class coworkers truly so opposed to Meatless Mondays, they could have made their protests known before it passed. That is the people's choice, after all.

Demon in a Bottle

"You know, sometimes, when I drink, it makes me drowsy, and then even I'm driving and I almost fell asleep, haha. That ever happen to you?"

Despite that "haha," the lady appeared to be in earnest in sharing her personal findings on the effects of alcohol consumption on one's ability to operate a motor vehicle. At least, if she was joking, I couldn't tell what the punchline was supposed to be, unless this middle-aged, mumbly Filipino lady was playing the part of some sort of living satire of the impaired judgment of the intoxicated. Then again, supposing hers was a serious question, I was at a loss at how to respond to that either.

"What the hell?!" answered her appalled companion, a younger Mexican woman. "That's why you don't drink and drive!"

Apparently not one to suffer fools, this second woman sounded legitimately pissed. I wanted to step in and suggest that maybe she was being a tad severe. Like, I dunno, maybe the first lady came from a land without automobiles, and so, even having reached her forties, she had never properly been acquainted with the concept of driving under the influence. But then it came out that this second woman had once lost a high school friend to a drunk driving collision. I could see that there was naught to be done but let her speak her piece.

A few minutes later, they were friends again. They started discussing Iron Man 3, and suddenly it was my turn to lose it.

"It's Tony STARK! Not 'SPARK!' You don't know what you're talking about, you should just do what I do and shut your mouth. Just shut your mouth."

At least, that's what I might have said, were I not versed in the art of self-control. I held my peace. You'll appreciate, however, that it was a sensitive subject for me, having lost a friend to an Iron Man.

At least it wasn't the middle thumb

Seriously, I sprained my right thumb, and it is very much the nuisance. I was going from a sitting position to standing, leaning my hands on my desk as a support to push off in rising (which I needed because I have bad knees). Something went wrong, and I could feel my right thumb crumple as I rose. I knew immediately that I had sprained it, and all I could do was think to myself, Damn it all. It was a freak occurrence—a perfectly routine motion, done exactly as I had done it thousands of times before, only this time my body wasn't there for me. What a nuisance.

While waiting for my right thumb to heal, I've shifted over to using just my left hand for most tasks, which is all manner of lame (though I suppose it's less "lame" than my right hand is at the moment). I must say, I have a renewed respect for lefties (especially the one-handed, and especially lefties who aren't actually left-handed but just lost their right hands, especially if it happened while fighting in some war). You southpaws do not have it easy. At my workplace, for example, it feels like everything I need is always situated on the right side of my desk, forcing me to reach over and across when using my left hand. It's like having to do twice the work of a right-handed person for the same amount of pay. Maybe everything is on the right because I'm the one who set it up that way, because I'm right-handed. Or maybe we live in a society that thoughtlessly discriminates against citizen sinister.

At least I'm able to do most things still with my left hand, albeit more sluggishly, and I don't know how long I can really expect my weaker left arm to carry the burden of my day-to-day all by itself. Right now, the hardest part of the day is when I have to turn the ignition in my car. Right hand is too weak to turn the key, and my left hand can't deal with that angle (it's on the right side of the steering wheel, and not because I put it there), so it takes both my hands working together just to get my car started.

Franz Ferdinand – Humphrey’s Concerts by the Bay, April 15, 2013

During that week in the middle of Coachella, Franz Ferdinand also swung down to San Diego to play a show at Humphrey's Concerts by the Bay.

They played all my favorites—"The Dark of the Matinee," "Walk Away," "Do You Want To," and, of course, "Take Me Out"—as well as a number of newer songs, presumably from a forthcoming album. It felt like the show was mostly older material, but I must confess, I don't know all their songs that well, and a lot of them sound the same to me, so there were likely a number of songs brand new to me but which nevertheless sounded very familiar. Aside from the hits, the highlight of the show was probably when all four members of the band converged on the drum set, each man taking up a pair of sticks to join in on roughly a five-minute drum outro to the night (pre-encore).

The band performed well—the songs sounded almost exactly like the album versions—and Alex Kapranos is probably the most effortlessly cool frontman of any band on the planet. That said, I found myself wishing they had put a little more effort into engaging with the audience. The show felt workmanlike on their part, with not only the songs but also every word spoken between songs written and rehearsed in advance. Kapranos would give a very short speech, for example, along the lines of "I woke up this morning and [blah blah blah]," and then that would inelegantly transition into the opening verse of "Do You Want To." Even the new songs were introduced in similarly cursory fashion (e.g. Kapranos saying, "I feel like I have bullets going through my head," to introduce the song "I'll Never Get Your Bullet Out of My Head").

Sometimes, between songs, Kapranos would only say, "San Diego, I think I like you."

"That's the third time he's said that," I remarked at one point.

And, each time he felt the need to say it, I felt less convinced that he meant it. The only thing I hate more than these disingenuous shout-outs is when they turn the mic to the crowd and ask us to fill in the chorus, which Kapranos did several times. First of all, I don't go to shows to be flattered into thinking myself a part of the band, or pay money to hear myself sing. Furthermore, it always sounds awful and leaves me feeling insecure over how my city compares in the band's estimation against other cities they've played (even though they probably don't think about it at all).

My companion had seen them play at Coachella just the night before and insisted they had been better, more energetic. Of course, I always love hearing that things got worse upon my arrival!

"They're probably tired," she suggested, making excuses for them, as though this platinum-selling band was somehow unprepared for the touring lifestyle.

"Y'know, it's Monday for me too," I said. "But you don't hear me complaining."

"But it's not Monday for them!" she pointed out. "They worked yesterday. And you are complaining."

Fair enough.

I really was in agony, though. I don't think I'll ever attend another standing room, general admission show. At least not on a Monday. My back cannot handle that.

Tegan and Sara - Humphrey's Concerts by the Bay, April 17, 2013

Saw Tegan and Sara performing at Humphrey's Concerts by the Bay in San Diego last week.



I think that may have been the first time in my life I'd ever felt old. To clarify, I've certainly felt physically past my peak and maybe even a tad feeble on many occasions lately, but never before had I ever truly felt socially old until I felt myself sticking out amid the crowd at this show. (And I've been to Chuck E. Cheese as an unmarried, childless adult.) Mind you, I'm not yet 30. But, damn, everybody else just seemed so young, hip, spirited. Maybe they weren't all actually that much younger than me, and maybe age is just a state of mind. But, though the precise moment may vary from individual to individual, I am convinced that everybody who lives long enough does become old someday, and it's not up to them at what point that happens. When you get there, the world will let you know. And while it may be tempting to try to argue your case and live out "proof" that you are still young at heart, truly there can be no dignified protest, once you've aged out of the young people's circle. Any attempt to act younger than your age will only come across as pathetic. A whimsical teenager is romantic. A whimsical middle-aged man who hasn't got his act together is pitiful.

At any rate, although I'm thinking perhaps this was the last "young person's concert" I might ever attend, I did get over my feelings of oldness quickly enough to just enjoy the show. Tegan and Sara put on a good one.

Opening for them was Canadian band Stars. They commented on how, during this week between Coachella weekends, bigger acts (like Tegan and Sara) could divvy up the various Southern California venues for additional shows while in the area. For smaller bands playing at Coachella (like Stars), it mostly depended on which larger band asked them to come along. As an opening act, Stars is a pretty good choice. I enjoy a number of songs off their latest album, The North, and though they may not have the greatest stage presence or be the most photogenic, they are charmingly Canadian. Frequently during their performance, they would smile and wave out to the crowd, at times seeming to actually be waving directly to me (but that was probably just my imagination).

Then Tegan and Sara took the stage and did not disappoint. They brought more of that uniquely Canadian sweetness, casually bantering back and forth between songs, and also playfully engaging with the crowd. And these weren't just some phoned-in, scripted lines; they would converse with the front rows and remark on the bayside venue, which they observed was also attended by freeloaders on rafts and those out on the balconies of the adjoining inn.

And the music was good, of course. I'd written previously of my fondness for Tegan and Sara's latest album, Heartthrob. The production on the album is polished beyond what is possible in a live human performance, so some songs did not sound as great as I knew them. "Love They Say," in particular, doesn't really work live, because, even thematically, it speaks from an idealized view of love and should be matched with perfect otherworldly vocals. My favorite song from Heartthrob, "Now I'm All Messed Up," also seemed to overly tax Tegan's cords on the high notes. It probably didn't help that it was among their last songs (positioned so because it is a fan favorite) on a long night in a busy week, but, even if it wasn't the best I'd ever heard it, I still enjoyed hearing them perform it live. On the bright side, the bass levels seemed way louder than on my home setup, so that enhanced many of the songs. Consequently sounding more than ever like a dance track, "Drove Me Wild" also benefited from an extended 40-second intro—more than double the length of the album version's. A longer intro generally gives the band more time to warm up and the fans a moment to cheer on first recognizing the song, but, in this case, it also encouraged the crowd to groove out in a way I never would to the album version.

In addition to their new songs off Heartthrob, they also played a few of their older hits. From The Con (2007), they played favorites "Back in Your Head" and "The Con." Off If It Was You (2002) was "Living Room." And from So Jealous (2004), they played "Where Does the Good Go." These songs remained more modest compared to their Heartthrob performances—they didn't add a bunch of synth to them—but it was interesting to hear these older tracks sung by a more mature Tegan and Sara. You can always tell the twins apart not only by their hairstyles but also their personalities, which are reflected in their vocal performances. Sara tends to be the sweeter of the two, while Tegan is throatier and more ironic. On the older albums, the differences are harder to make out, I suspect because their voices are naturally more similarly somewhere in the middle, and they have actually put in work over the years to give themselves each a more distinct performing voice. Even so, I find they've become more confident, less affectedly chirpy as vocalists, compared to when they originally recorded those songs. Or maybe they were just really young at the time, and their voices have literally changed. In any case, I found myself newly enjoying the old songs.

They also played "Arrow" and "Alligator" off Sainthood (2009). Not my favorite of their albums, although Sara having to stop in the middle of "Alligator" because the distraction of her untied shoelace had caused her to forget the lyrics yielded a highlight of the night.

For the encore, they played acoustic versions of "Call It Off" and "Nineteen" from The Con. Very nice, especially as Tegan shared the story behind "Nineteen," written about their early years after high school, when they gambled on committing their lives to their music, not knowing if they would ever make it. Finally, they closed out the night with a stripped-down version of "Feel It in My Bones," originally a track they collaborated on with DJ Tiesto for his trance album Kaleidoscope.

Not Even at the Gates of Hell

Following such a terrible tragedy in the news as the explosions at the Boston Marathon on Monday, it is the natural and appropriate response, for those of us even yet far removed from the scene, to take stock of our own lives and reflect, each of us, on who we are. Am I the person I should be? Were it all to end today, would I have any regrets over how I lived? What was I doing that very moment the news broke? I don't need a keen memory to know the answer to that last one; it's all recorded on Facebook:



I was making some dumb joke. Not even a joke, really, but more just a mock-bitter articulated sigh brought on by "the Mondays," and, in the manner of a diary entry with no context, of no likely use or amusement to anyone other than myself.

In any case, less than an hour after my status update, a friend posted an update expressing their shock and sadness over the Boston Marathon explosions. The next several minutes saw more friends posting about the incident—thoughts to the victims, calls for prayers, worrying about loved ones in the area, broken hearts and frowning emoticons. My news feed that day was a steady stream of solemn status updates from friends about the explosions. And then there was my thing mixed in among it all, which suddenly seemed in poor taste—like wearing flashy colors to a funeral.

Was it unfortunate, regrettable that I had said it on that particular day? Probably. There are at least two possible lessons to take from this:

1) The remark did not become in poor taste by its coinciding with a terrible tragedy. It simply was in poor taste, period. If it took it coinciding with a terrible tragedy to get me to realize that it was bad, then perhaps, in the future, I should simply proceed as though every moment coincided with a terrible tragedy, and take care accordingly to always avoid saying anything that might be in poor taste.

OR

2) Recognize that every day of my life is a dumb joke, and so is Facebook. Also, some terrible tragedy is happening somewhere every day. The only way to avoid saying anything that might be in poor taste is to avoid saying anything at all. But that would not make me a better person but only perhaps a marginally more pleasant one. And any time we compromise out of fear, or desire for comfort, the enemy wins (or, at least, we lose).

So, was my dumb joke poorly timed and regrettable? Maybe. Even so, I take back nothing, and I can pretty well promise you this won't be the last time.

Remember Del Norte

Volunteered at the food bank. A group of high schoolers was volunteering there as well—a common enough occurrence, as community service hours are nowadays a requirement for graduation at many high schools. One of them came up to me, however, and asked if we had volunteered together before. It was possible. I didn't recognize him, but, then again, I've never been good with faces.

"I'm here pretty often," I said.

"No," he said, "I've never been here. It was at a food packing event at Del Norte."

I was stunned. I still couldn't remember the kid, but I definitely remembered that event at Del Norte High School. But that had been three years ago! And I had only been there an hour, during which I couldn't have said more than two sentences to any of the people I had been working next to.

It was one of those moments that made me pause and reflect. What was my life three years ago? And what is it now? And I remembered that the only reason I had even been there that day at Del Norte was because I had wanted to spend time with this girl who had invited me to come along with her. Irony of ironies, she had ended up having to call me ten minutes into the event to let me know that she wasn't going to be able to make it, and that disappointment had been my primary takeaway from the experience.

Running into this kid three years later put things into perspective. It was like uncovering camcorder footage of myself that I didn't know existed, and, on the one hand, the footage didn't tell the story of what was going on inside, yet, on the other hand, it offered a larger perspective of what was going on outside, which I had been oblivious to in the moment. I had never even really considered that there were other things going on that day. It had been a day in my life, but now it occurred to me that it had been a day in everyone else's life too. It had meant one thing to me, and different things to other people. And, amazingly, there was even at least one person whose memory of that day included me.

The Four-Day Workweek

Refreshed after that three-day weekend, I reported to work Tuesday morning feeling, for once in my life, ready to take on the workweek. Truly, I believe future civilizations will look back upon this age and conclude, "Truly, the five-day workweek was one of humankind's great missteps. God rest their pink-skin souls."