Zen Retreat

Today I am traveling to New England where I will partake in a 5 day silent meditation retreat run by Zen Buddhists. Last year I did this same retreat and it was essentially a life-altering experience. (I did blog about it in Jan 08) The first couple days were brutal, but the last couple were beautiful. I learned that my mind doesn't always have to run the show. I credit the meditation practice that I did so intensively at last year's retreat, and continued throughout the year, as a very big reason why I was able to break into the Dueling Piano business this year. First, I was able to access increased concentration and was thus able to memorize music, after having been convinced that I was the single most forgetful piano entertainer in NY. Secondly the increased focus/concentration helped helped me immensely on stage get through stage fright and to focus while there were so many things going on, including playing with a drummer, something I had never really done before. This year I will know many of the people and I won't feel quite as alone as I did when I began my retreat last year. I come back New Years Day, which is also the day my roommate comes back from his travels. The following day I will be going to my hometown where I will attend my cousin's wedding. Then...who knows?

Shopping for Christmas

I've been back in NYC for the better part of a week, spending the holidays with friends and family, as it should be. A Latin friend of mine made a comment about how differently Americans celebrate Christmas and the holidays versus how his people celebrate back home. He was very polite, but I think what he meant was that we are so focused on shopping and retail and expectations, while back in his country, family just show up with food, wine and guitars and sing, drink, eat and dance the holidays away, and gifts aren't part of the identity of Christmas. This Christmas I didn't really shop for gifts. Instead I have tried to get together with people and have dinner or just time together. I was on 5th Ave, the retail capital of the western world 2 days before Christmas, and I couldn't identify one single person that looked like they understood the meaning of Christmas. At the moment of that realization I remembered the employee that got killed opening the doors of the Walmart on black Friday. It all hit me like a slap in the face and in a moment I realized clearer than ever that we, as a culture, have completely derailed. The things that aren't important have become our Gods. We give lip service to spirituality and religion, but greed and selfishness has become our spiritual principles. I think about animals in the wild. Do any other mammals commit suicide? Perhaps we have created a construct for ourselves that is so far from our true nature that it is impossible to achieve any lasting happyness or contentment by f0llowing the rules of the masses. And what about that man who committed suicide when he realized that he lost billions in the Madoff scam? It can't be any clearer. Our God is money and our religion, Greed, and when we lose that, we lose everything. It's beginning. The same thing that happened after the crash of '29. Bankers and investors throwing themselves out of windows because they have lost "everything." Today the New York Times announced on the front page that "Holiday Sales" were down 8% this year. That's big news. But what's bigger news is that such a statistic is so important to us as Americans that it made it on the front page of our biggest, most respected newspaper. What does that say about us as a people? I didn't see a metric for Holiday Spirit, but I wonder if anyone would care whether that went up or down even if there was such a metric.

I am hopeful that we have a president-elect that seems to understand that the direction of this country needs to be changed radically. But I think that our failings as a society go so far beyond Iraq and the Stock Market crash (see, I capitalized the "S" and the "M"...i didn't even realize it until after I had typed it!!) that he will merely be trying to fix the symptoms of a deeper cancer. Our values are so upside down that unless we can change them so completely, this society is doomed for complete failure.

Back in NYC

Yesterday I made the journey back to NYC, going from 75 degrees and sunny to 34 degrees, wintery mix and windy. Yeah it sucked, but I'm happy to be home. I was glad to be in FL, and the gig definitely stretched my abilities as an accompanist. I also had some amazing alone time, riding my bike all around this beautiful island at sunset, and just chilling out by the pool. I met up with some friends from NYC for dinner the last night I was there. We at a restaurant across the street from where I would be working in a short 2 hours. I had the Caribbean Grilled Red Snapper, and it was expertly cooked. The chef is a local celebrity and she made the rounds at the tables and we all complimented her on her food. Fast forward 2 hours, I was on stage performing across the street, and who walks in but Alice, the chef from across the street. So on the microphone I get everyone's attention and tell everyone that we should all applaud our celebrity chef Alice. And further, that I know she's an expert chef, because (wait for it....wait for it...waaaaiit...) "I just got done eating Alice's snapper!"

OK, it was supremely tacky, but funny as hell!

Earlier that day I was watching a street performer juggle fire while on a unicycle that was over 8 feet tall. It was amazing to see, but what was more entertaining was how he handled this woman who was heckling him. The two memorable zingers he threw out to her were: "Who lit the fuse on your tampon?" and then facing the crowd, "I remember when alcoholics used to be anonymous!"

The trip ended well. I made a new friend with one of the singers I worked with who also lives in NYC. (The guy who's name I forgot on stage.) The last night I got so much love from my audience, many of whom had been there every night to hear me perform. I don't know if I will ever want to go back, or even if I will be invited back. There are some serious personalities and politics at work here. But I do know that I did an outstanding job, and that the people that matter the most, the audiences, all knew it.

Fitting in

It’s 4:43am on Saturday. I just got home from work. It was a good night at work for the most part. The people were nice, and appreciative, and they participated and they listened. There was an older black woman with gray hair that sat right in front and requested the most wonderful standards, including The Shadow of Your Smile and Misty, and she listened with such intensity that I though she was a musician. I asked her and she told me her father was a piano man and she felt as though I was channeling him. She got teary when I sang Someone to Watch Over Me and Wonderful World. They were his songs. It was a moment.

I must confess I’m feeling less than stellar. It’s very difficult to articulate, but I feel as though I don’t belong with the people that I’m working with down here. They are all NYC piano bar people that have a certain “way” that they do things. There is one singer in particular who, although ridiculously talented, is also very difficult for me to work with. I asked her for her book, so that I could practice with it, and she told me she was “very particular” as to whom she gave it out to. So my rehearsal with her music was much more limited than I would have wanted and as a result, I have not been the best accompanist for her. She, in turn, has been quick to criticize and rather unforgiving. In a way, it’s been a growing experience for me, because it forces me into a very high level of concentration when I accompany her, and although I am not perfect, I am conscious of much more than if she wasn’t so critical. But it goes beyond that. Not too many people have been warm to me here. They are all cordial, and some even nice, but not warm or inviting. There is one singer who arrived a few days ago, and we are sharing the band house. He is a nice guy and we’ve begun to bond. But he had an issue with the other pianist that is down here. This other guy fucked up two songs of his in a row and left him high and dry on stage, feeling and looking like an idiot. So we talked about that, and we’ve rehearsed his entire book today. Tonight, I knew it was so very important to him that his sets with me go great. And, musically they did, and in a large part due to my concentration and desire to be perfect for him. But through my high level of concentration on his music I made a fatal error of referring to him not just once but two times by a wrong name. And he was upset and kind of came at me on stage. I understand why he did, but even so, it didn’t feel good. (Footnote: he arrived back at the house while I was writing this entry and honestly and rigorously complimented me on how well I had played for him tonight. After which, I, in turn, showed him this past paragraph that I had just written. His comment was that it was all true, and that I shouldn’t change a word, and then he gave me a friendly kiss and went to his room.)

Last week there was a singer I referred to in a previous entry that I developed the greatest respect for. I played for her all week, and she was crazy talented. All week we were part of a crew of bartenders, wait staff/singers and pianists and we all sort of bonded, but then the last night she was here I felt as though she was completely brushing me off, not engaging me in conversations, not laughing at my jokes (while laughing at every one else’s) etc. etc. It’s damn difficult to describe, and it was very subtle, and yet, it was real and very inexplicable (at least to me).

I have not gotten one iota of feedback from the people who hired me. Oh, they are friendly and gracious, but have not uttered any compliments or criticisms. Not one. I’m not looking for my ego to be stroked, but if I’m doing a job for you, I would like to know that you are happy with it, or if you are not, tell me how I can make it better.

The thing is, I don’t really know why I don’t fit in. I just know I don’t. Some of these people have alcohol or drug addictions, but some don’t. Some are better musicians than me, but yet in certain areas, I’m a better musician than they are. I’ve been told that one of the singers doesn’t like it when someone has a better night then they do, or gets a better audience response. It’s a complex hodgepodge of personalities down here. I’m not sure what to make of it.

Facing Demons

Most of us have one or two people in our life that have caused us such angst either now or perhaps in the distant past that we get a physiological response at the mere thought of that person. There have only been two such people in my adult life and one of them was performing in the club I am currently playing at in Florida, immediately before I arrived. I haven’t had to deal directly with this person (let’s call him Brittle Ego Boy) for 4 years, since he got me fired from a steady gig I had in NY because of a 3:00a.m. verbal indiscretion at a NYE party. I had let it slip that Brittle Ego Boy had a drug and alcohol problem and he was known to literally fall off the piano bench after drinking vodka out of a Gatorade jug all night long on the job. In my defense it was all true, and pretty much common knowledge. But regardless, I knew I was wrong and humbly apologized in writing (replete with chocolates and a hallmark) to Brittle Ego Boy, but he would not have it and proceeded to pull the strings to eventually get me fired. I don’t know if it was the unfairness of the situation, the pettiness about it, or the humility in my apology that was so totally rebuffed, but it really deeply bothered me for a couple of years after.

Fast forward to 3 weeks ago. I found out that B.E.B. was working this Florida gig immediately before I was scheduled to come down. I found myself playing the same tapes again in my mind and my body physically reacting with a quickening of my pulse and raising of my blood pressure. And then I came down here. The first night I was here, B.E.B. was the topic of conversation among the staff. It seems that he got himself drunk and was obnoxious, self aggrandizing, and completely the worst accompanist the singers have ever had to work with. He bragged about his fancy New York apartment that he owns that is apparently worth $650,000 and will be worth $1.2 Million in 5 years. He repeatedly craved validation from the GM that he was just the best piano player they have ever had come down from NYC. As I listened to the really nice people that I have now been working with for the last 9 days completely trash his personality and his accompaniment skills I realized that Brittle Ego Boy was just a paper dragon all this time.

Florida Keys

I have been in the Florida Keys for a few days now, working a "New York style" piano bar. Basically that means that I am playing lots of standards and broadway and the wait staff are all professional singers that come up every hour and do 15 minute sets. Just about every musician that they hire has worked the piano bar scene in NYC. Most of these people I have heard of and some I've bet before. I'm really enjoying the gig so far. They have a 7 foot Yamaha concert grand piano that seems to play itself. What that really means is that the sound is so delicious that you become more and more inspired with every passing note, that you play better and better. I use a lot of contemporary harmonies involving minor seconds and dominants with sharp 11's or sharp 9's, flat 5's, etc. that sound so complex and lush on this instrument it makes you want to explore new chord voicings and try new cadences.

The staff I am working with are great. There are two singers from New York, both of which are talented, but one is particularly noteworthy. She has a voice and a style reminiscent of the great singers of the 50's and 60's, particularly Ella. She does a version of Bewitched that made that song come alive in a way I've never experienced before. She is so talented it's really scary. I just wonder if the world we live in today is capable of recognizing such talent given the low bar that we as a culture seem to accept in our music and entertainment choices. Anyway, it's exciting to work with her, although she lost her luggage with her songbook on the plane on the way here, so I have to play everything using my own music and transpose it up a 4th or 5th for her. On one hand it's always good to stretch my abilities like that, but on the other hand, I know I'm not playing as good as I could for her since I'm focused on finding the right chords. Anyway, life is good. I'm here for 2 weeks.

Dueling dream

I dreamed i was in college (but it was now) and was doing this Dueling gig. My partner had already gotten up on stage and begun his first song when I realized that I was walking around completely naked. I signaled him that I was leaving for a minute and then ran to my room to get some clothes. I couldn't find my room right away and now I was actutely aware of my nakedness. Finally I found my room and my roommate (who I didn't know) was there with his girlfriend. I quickly got dressed, but realized I had put on a turtleneck and a wool sweater. Knowing that this would be absurdly hot on stage, I proceeded to take off the sweater, but as I was getting ready to run out the door I realized that I had just replaced it with another heavy wool sweater. This repeated itself 3 or 4 times until I got it right. I ran out the room and realized I left my microphone and songlist on another piano in the school. So I found that and ran back to the performance space, almost 50 minutes late. By this time I had two partners on stage and they were both pissed.

Thanksgiving

I finally worked it all out after hashing over several options with friends and family. My roommate and I were going down to Philly for the holiday. My friend Michael was going to pick us up in Trenton and go to his family’s home for dinner and then drive us to Philly for dessert with my family. After dessert my Uncle was going to drive us back to N. Jersey where we would bus back into NYC. All this went to shit when I woke up vomiting at 8:00am. I don’t know whether it was the four (yes, only 4) drinks over the course of 4 hours that I had the night before or whether it was a stomach flu or I ate bad food but I spent the better part of the morning vomiting until going back to bed at 11. When I woke at 2:30 I felt somewhat better but still very fragile. I canceled all my plans and Roommate and I spent the day setting up shelving we had bought 2 weeks ago, and unpacking our final boxes from our move 6 weeks ago. Then we crashed dinner at Roommate’s brother’s house with a bunch of Ecuadorian’s that we had never met before. They were nice, it was fun and there was even a proper blessing at the beginning of the meal. By the time we returned to our apartment, I felt almost completely healed. I caught up with my brother by cell and then we watched a really bad kitchy movie starring Ru Paul. I crashed at 1am.

Update on the hand and work

So it seems as though my hand problems may be over. By Monday it felt significantly better and yesterday and today I have felt no pain at all. I spoke with a friend of mine who is also a doctor (a liver pathologist, to be exact), and he suggested that when I did my new push-up excercise I injured a tendon. A subtle injury perhaps, but because the hand is so complex, a minor injury like that can cause pain in the entire hand. He also told me that tendons take much longer to heal than a muscle injury, which would explain the two weeks of pain. Since the pain is so completely and totally gone, I'm thinking this may be exactly what happened. We'll see.

I have gotten a couple of gigs. The first is a last minute booking for a dueling gig in VA. The guy who now books this room was one of the players I performed with in NC. Anyway, when I heard he was looking I called and he booked me on the spot. So that's this weekend. Then I got a two week gig for December in the Florida Keys at a New York style piano bar. I enjoy the keys and hopefully will get some diving in. That gig was just confirmed yesterday. I will be back in NY for Christmas.

Today I got a call from someone who wants to pass my name along to an entertainment director for a dueling bar in South East Asia! They are looking for an American player for at least 3 months. So far, I like the sound of it. I'd prefer not to go for 3 months, but heck, it's SE Asia. I love SE Asia! We'll see where this goes. (note: as I was typing this, I got an email from the ED from this room.)

I'm going to Philly to visit family over thanksgiving and I'm taking my roommate. I'll be back in time to catch my flight to VA on Friday.

Facebook

About 3 years ago I asked one of my college-aged friends if I should go on facebook, and he wrinkled up his nose and said, emphatically, "No, that would be just creepy. It's only for college kids!" But then facebook went through a demographic change over the next couple years and the new members became increasingly older. So about 5 months ago I got a facebook page and immediately began collecting friends. But I chose to limit my facebook friends to people I actually called my friends in real life. Even so, I now have about 40 friends. In NYC, and perhaps all over, the tendancy is to immediately add anyone you meet to your facebook friend list. So it is not unusual to see someone with 200 or 300 or even more "friends." But really, what does that mean? I don't want to know what brand of Kona Coffee someone I met once at a party 3 years ago is drinking this morning! What makes you think I might want to play scrabble with you just because we copulated one drunken night 2 years ago and will, no doubt, never speak again? And really, do you need to know why I think the candicy of Sarah "I can see Russia from my house" Palin exemplifies the decline of American Civilization just because we were introduced to each other one night at the theatre by our ex's who, by the way, haven't spoken to each other in 18 months?

So in this spirit, I gave the following response to a friend request by someone I had met precisely twice through a mutual friend:

Hey Chris. Thanks for the friend request! I hope you don't mind if i don't approve it just yet. The friends I have on face book are people I have known for a long time. So hopefully we will get to know each other in the coming months. Best regards!

New York being New York, I ran into him the following day, and he "thanked me" for denying his friend request. I smiled and said, but wasn't it the nicest rejection you ever received for a friend request?!

Philisophical ramblings about criticism

I was reading a blog a friend of mine writes where she reviews books. It got me to thinking about the concept of criticism. I've never subscribed to a philosophy that we must protect everyone's feelings, whether a artist, an author, a singer or, dare I say it, a CHILD! There is something to be learned by hearing unadorned earnest criticism of your work. As a society we have become so scrupulously concerned with sparing people's feelings that we make it a way of life to sidestep conflict and all we really are engaging in is a soft and fuzzy form of dishonesty. I would much prefer to read a reviewer, let's say, who trashes the books that deserved to be trashed and praises the ones that deserve to be praised.

We worry more about how our honesty will hurt others rather than worrying about whether our comments are genuine, well articulated and educated. The person being critiqued will benefit from your point of view as long as they are not so insecure as to not get past the fact that you didn't like it, and by extension them. And if they are so insecure as to not be able to accept earnest criticism, they don't deserve to like you anyway ;-)

It's delightful, it's delicious, it's delovely. (It's desarcasm)

About a week ago I noticed that my right hand had begun hurting. When I picked up a pot of water for the coffee it was especially painful. I've never had hand pain. Ever. And now all of a sudden it's been there for over a week, and it doesn't seem to be going away. Delightful. I thought it might have been a result of a new pushup exercise I did, but now I'm not so sure. And of course, I've already run the scenario in my head all the way to the very end, where I'm unable to work anymore, trying to get jobs for $50 singing in nursing homes, with my crippled hands hanging uselessly at my sides.

In related news, I have to make a decision on my health insurance soon. I have had catostrophic insurance for the past year, which has a rediculously high deductable before it kicks in, but I only pay $139/month. I have been very healthy this year and not had to go to the doctor but once. So suppose my hand is going to become an issue. Then maybe I should step up my insurance to the $400/month plan so I can afford the tests and drugs or surgery for the hand. Arthritis? Carpel Tunnel? Delovely.

And of course the world economy and the stock market is going to shit, and so is my retirement account along with it. This is not good. Not at all.

memorizing Abba, working in VA, hand pain

Yesterday I received a call from a dueler that I worked with for a week in NC asking me to work with him at a new room he is booking in VA. It's a one weekend gig, but as with all others, could lead to more work. Currently I have a couple of Abba songs that I'm trying to memorize. One of them is Thank You For The Music, which is a song I have played every night for many years as my closing song, but I had never bothered to memorize! What's interesting about Abba is that many of their songs (including Dancing Queen) have a much more complex chord structure than you'd ever expect for a Euro-pop band--so much so that I could play a song for years and not automatically memorize it. It may seem strange but unless I really approach a song with intent to memorize it, I won't memorize it, no matter how long and often I play it.

In other, more troubling news, I have had an arthritic-like pain in my right hand for several days now. I've never experienced this before, but it's definitely there. I'm hoping it's a muscle pain from sleeping on it the wrong way, or doing a new excercise a few days ago using push-up grips that my roommate had lying around the apartment. But, it's made me think about what I would do if I couldn't play the piano again. I guess at this point I won't give it too much thought unless it persists. It's certainly not bad enough to interfere with my playing.

Holland

I was trolling one of the professional online message boards I belong to and found a dueling gig in Holland. I had spoken to the guy who was booking it back before I had even began dueling pianos, but nothing had come of it then. I got in touch with him, and he told me that he was indeed looking for players that would like to go to Holland for a minimum of 3 weeks to work. Apparently there's a club there that does a lot of private gigs, based upon the dueling concept, however depending upon the client they will ad anything and everything on top of the dueling show from smoke machines and a laser show to a full show band including horns. I would be expected to play left hand electric bass with an additional keyboard on top of the piano. For most nights that there was not a horn section present, I would also be expected to do the horn hits with my right hand on the keyboard on the songs I was backing my partner up on. There are only two players (dueling pianist/singers), including the Dutch player who I guess owns the whole operation. The Dutch guy would take care of all the Dutch requests, and I was expected to do what I do, except that it was a music driven concept, almost more like a dance band rather than a traditional dueling concept with call downs and humor. I was told that the production was so elaborate that I would feel like a rock star.

I loved the idea in theory, especially where I can work overseas for only 3 weeks at a time. But I was afraid I wouldn't be able to give these people everything they needed. I'm just a humble piano bar performer. My left hand isn't strong enough to be playing electric bass, I don't think, and especially when I'm backing up my partner on Dutch songs that I have never even heard before. I am also not used to playing in a show band like that. Add to that, the requests a European audience would make would be different that those I'm used to, so I'd probably have to get up another 20 or 30 songs before I go over there. I'm sure it would be great fun, and yeah, I probably could fake my way through it, but it would be substandard.

Dueling piano newer playlist

I rehearsed my singer today for her Judy Garland show on Saturday. I brought in a friend of mine to direct her, and sat back and watched him in amazement as he helped her transform her entire presentation. I have rarely seen such a good coach. He was able to immediately figure out the essence of what was missing in her show and help her achieve it. In two hours time he brought out wonderful moments of honest and compelling intensity. All 3 of us realized it, and it was thrilling to watch. I just hope she remembers to summon that same energy while she is up on stage doing the show on Saturday.

Between rehearsals I stopped by the restaurant that my roommate works at and made him feed me angel hair pasta with tomato basil sauce while I listed to a new playlist on my iPhone. It was from a rock songlist that a couple of the dueler pianists compiled of some "newer" requests including:

When I Come Around - Green Day

Paralyzer - Finger Eleven

Small Things - Blink 182

Crazy Game of Poker - O.A.R.

The Impression That I Get - Reel Big Fish

Discovery Channel - Bloodhound Gang

Get a Job - Offspring (Obladi, Cecilia mix)

Song for the Dumped - Ben Folds 5

Inside Out - Eve 6

Thunderstruck - AC/DC

Machinehead - Bush

I'm Just a Girl - No Doubt

All Summer Long - Kid Rock

Fall to Pieces - Velvet Revolver

I Wanna Fly Away - Lenny Kravitz

Are You Gonna Go My Way - Lenny Kravitz

Another Loser Anthem Song - Good Charlotte

What I got - Sublime

Beverly Hills - Weezer

Because I Got High - Afroman

Say it Ain't So - Weezer

Under The Bridge - Red Hot Chili Peppers

All Apologies - Nirvana

No Rain - Blind Melon

Elderly Woman Behind a Counter in a Small Town - Pearl Jam

Angel - Shaggy (Joker)

What's Up - 4 non Blondes

Rehab Song - Amy Winehouse

Bartender Song - Rehab

Creep - Radiohead

Don't Look Back in Anger - Oasis

I'm Yours - Jason Mraz

Taylor - Jack Johnson

Steal My Kisses or Burn one Down - Ben Harper

Waiting on the World to Change, Why Georgia Why or No Such Thing - John Mayer

I Will Buy You A New Life or Father of Mine - Everclear

What Would You Say - Dave Matthew's Band

Ants Marching - Dave Matthew's Band

Two Step - Dave Matthews Band

Trippin' Billies - Dave Matthews Band

Hook - Blues Traveler

Run Around - Blues Traveler

The Mountains Win Again - Blues Traveler

Interstate Love Song - Stone Temple Pilots

Jeremy - Pearl Jam

Evenflow - Pearl Jam

If you could only see - Tonic

Maybe - Candlebox

Cumbersome - 7 Mary Three

My Mama Said - Lenny Kravitz

Sabotage - Beastie Boys

Paul Revere - Beastie Boys

Girls - Beastie Boys

Motown Philly - Boyz 2 Men (gotta have harmonies)

End of the Road - Boyz 2 Men

Apartment update

I got good news today. My tenant has told me he will stay on for an additional 5 months, which means I don't have to deal with the very trying task of finding another tenant until June. He is really the perfect tenant. He is a 40-something gay man from Paris doing business development for a European company which wires me the rent money directly into my bank account every month. For my part I have attended to his issues as they come up, and he is very content to have me as a landlord. Speaking of which, apparently the refrigerator in the apartment has been getting noisier and noisier over the past several months, so I found a repair person off of Craigslist who came over and wanted $245 to replace the fan and do general maintenance. It didn't seem right and I sent him away. But I'm stuck trying to find a reasonably priced appliance repair person that won't rip me off.

Final Show and then Home

My last night of work (Sat) was good fun. I had a nice crowd and recognized most of the patrons. Someone tipped me early, and as I am not allowed to have a tip jar, I made a big fuss over it and folded it to a 90 degree angle and stood it up on it’s side right on top of the piano. Many of the people that had been coming to see me all week came up and gave me nice tips after seeing that. Near the end of the night there was this obnoxious queen with more money than sense who tried to buy me (successfully, I should add—I’m not proud) with a $100 bill to get me to play after I was scheduled to stop. I played another 15 minutes, and he then gave me yet another $100 to play a final song. One of my regulars showed me a nomination for a special commendation he submitted to the cruise line in my name. He wrote that I, single-handedly, had made his wife’s and his vacation.

Sunday I made the long journey home, via Detroit. Miles of walking through airports was the biggest drag, but surprisingly, both of my flights left and arrived on time. I finished Scott McClellan's book "What Happened" on the subway ride home from JFK. It's a decent book, worth reading if you want so insight into the Bush White House and how decisions were made. It felt really really good to walk into my front door and be home again. Now it is Monday and I owe my tenant a refrigerator repair, so I have to get on that.

The end of the cruise

I’m at the very end of my 2 week contract. Tomorrow I leave to NYC via Detriot. I’m a bit concerned because my flight will have to somehow bypass this huge (now category 4) hurricane near Cuba. And I’m hoping that the blizzards that have afflicted the north central US won’t delay my flight to Detroit. I’m gonna guess that tomorrow will not be a smooth travel day.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time on this cruise. I could see me getting very bored in a 4 month contract. Maybe next time I’ll be able to do a 4 or 6 week contract. That would be the perfect amount of time. Now that I’ve found the piano in the chapel I have almost everything I need on board: free food, great accommodations, room service, internet, a nice gym, and a practice room. The only things missing are my boy and my close friends.

I ran into the Cruise Director yesterday in the hall and he told me that he wrote good things about me in his weekly report to corporate headquarters, which was crucial if I am ever to come back to work for this Cruise Line or be considered for other work from the international agent that booked me.

Friday and Aruba

It’s seems as though I don’t get a day off this week, which really is a non-issue since I will be done my contract Sunday and can rest my voice after that. I will be spending the next week music directing the one-woman Judy Garland tribute cabaret show that I had worked on over the summer. We are doing another show, and I must say, she’s gotten better after going to cabaret camp and also after working with me on song interpretation. I have finally managed to get her to talk less and listen more, something that most of my own teachers always struggled with too! I straightened out my arrangements for getting off the ship on Sunday. I fly back to NYC via Detroit. God willing and the creeks don’t rise, I’ll be at JFK at 11pm.

I woke up in Aruba today and went into town with a friend from the crew. He was set upon getting Chinese food. We walked around asking directions for a Chinese restaurant, and every time we got directions they were pointing us back from wherever we had just been. I was getting grumpier and grumpier and finally after a solid hour of walking around in circles I abandoned my friend and almost immediately met up with some of the other performers on the ship and we all went and ate at a very touristy Mexican restaurant. There was a note in small print on the menu that stated that a 15% service charge would be added to all checks but that only a third of that amount (5%) goes directly to the server, so additional gratuities are encouraged. When the check came, there was indeed a 15% service charge added and at the bottom of the check were the words “gratuity not included.” That pissed me off. In America that would have been illegal and no decent waiter would ever work for an establishment like that. You are ripping off your customers by making them pay for the service twice, and you are ripping off your staff by not paying them the entire 15% service charge collected from the bill. I hate greedy restaurant owners.

Bonaire

I love Bonaire. It is billed as a diver’s paradise, and indeed most of the tourist trade is geared towards divers. I left the ship fully intending to dive, but the legistics were a problem. I couldn’t find a dive shop that could put me on a scheduled dive although I was told I could dive from their pier, as there was a beautiful reef right there, but I didn’t have a partner and didn’t want to dive alone. So I rented a moped instead and had a really wonderful day. There are paved roads that run the parimeter of this 112 sq mile Dutch (Netherlands) Antilles island right of the coast of Venezuela. The road is very narrow and there is very little traffic. It runs right by the sea, and the view is always beautiful. Sometimes the road is fully engulfed by vegatation and it appears like a tunnel. Other times you are surrounded on both sides with water. There are a lot of cacti and dessert vegetation and yet it is still plenty green. The air is dry and there were very few clouds in the sky. I passed through a flamingo sanctuary and saw a couple score of pink flamingos.

There are dive sites that surround the island and most are accessible directly from the shore. The dive sites are marked by painted-red rocks on the side of the road, and there is always a little space to park. Most tourists rent a car or truck for the week, and they drive themselves to the dozens of dive sites. They don’t need a dive boat and they are free to dive whenever the mood strikes. I really want to come back here for a week with another friend who is a certified diver and spend the week diving and riding mopeds around this georgous island. Anyone interested?

Wednesday

I found a piano to practice on! There is a little chapel on the boat that is almost never used, and it has this cute white upright Yamaha just sitting there. I sat down and practiced my newest song I’m trying to memorize: Cheeseburger in Paradise. Then I began to play through the part of my song list I haven’t been able to perform here. Things like Wonderwall, Santeria, Pour Some Sugar on Me, Hurts So Good, Summer of 69, etc. As I was practicing, two of the young Filipino porters who were cleaning nearby stopped in and started singing with me.

Since I’ve been on board I have managed to go to the gym every single day, which has seemed to compensate for all the food I eat on a daily basis. I’m also starting to eat better and better now that I’ve tasted everything over the past 11 days. I’m now eating a couple salads a day and whenever they serve fresh shrimp, I grab a whole bunch and store it in my fridge for snacking later. It’s all protein (and cholesterol). The cocktail sauce here is very bland so I’ve learned to mix in horseradish sauce to give it a kick. I’m noticing a difference in my body due to the consistency at the gym, although I know I won’t keep it up quite this much once I return to NY. Speaking of which, I got a letter under my door this morning giving me instructions for immigration since I was staying on the ship on turnover day. But I’m NOT staying on. I fly back on Sunday. So I have to go to the purser’s desk and straighten out those arrangements.

Last night was the staff Halloween party that had been postponed from last week due to the Norovirus red alert. I joined it at 12:30 after I finished work and it was in full swing. They had decorated the bar in cobwebs and scary stuff and there were a lot of people dancing. It was actually a very happening party. Much better than going to a club, since there was no attitude and there were people from different countries, backgrounds and status, all mingling together to have a good time. Throughout the night I had mixed gin, vodka and beer, but managed to get up this morning unscathed as I had never actually drank enough to get drunk.

Today I woke up at 11am as the ship was pulling into Bonaire. I ordered coffee from room service and showered. The ship has the best showers. Great water pressure and hot hot water.

Dominica, a confession and Granada

Dominica is a 108 square mile island in the Caribbean with a population of only 78,000 due to constant emigration as a result of all the hurricanes it seems to attract. I had signed up to escort the ship tour groups but wasn’t chosen, so today (Tues) after breakfast I left the ship and found a local tour guide who was forming a group just outside the ship (for about half the price that the ship offered a similar tour). Dominica is very mountainous with lots of windy roads, great vistas and a very verdant landscape. (Similar I think to Jamaica.) Much of the island is rain forest and the island is the number one eco-tourist destination in the island. The minivan took us on winding roads through the rain forests and into the center of the island where we got out and walked through a national park to end up at a glorious tropical waterfall. Our driver spoke 4 languages and has traveled all over the US and Europe. It was a cool day.

I returned and ate for the first time in the staff dinning room where one of the young gift shop clerks was in tears because she had gotten breathalized by security and found to be above their acceptable limit of 0.08% and had been fired. She was still drunk. Apparently she has already lost jobs with 2 other cruise lines because of drunkenness. She will be taken off the ship in Granada tomorrow morning.

Work was difficult tonight. I had a full room of very attentive people, but it was so hard to get them to DO anything. It was like pulling teeth. And when I would finish they would all clap very civilized golf claps and then the room would become extremely quiet, waiting for my next song. Not one person gave me anything to work with to get a back and forth going. At exactly 12 midnight I concluded my show, feeling drained. I returned to my cabin and in an instant remembered that we might have a new president. I turned on CNN and rejoiced in the news. Let’s all hope that our next president will help bring the United States back on track.

I need to be honest with you. I did not vote. I registered but forgot that I would need to do an absentee ballot until it was way too late. I feel pretty crumby for not voting, especially as I have strong opinions regarding national politics and am not shy about speaking them. I had to decide whether I would just lie and tell everyone I voted, or to fess up. So consider this to be my official confession. Although there was never a question that Obama wouldn’t handily take New York, so…my vote really wouldn’t have made a difference. (I can hear you all screaming now!) I actually made this confession at my show tonight and made all those that didn’t vote to admit to it also. It was a funny moment.

Today (Weds) I woke up in Granada…remember, that tiny little Caribbean island we invaded? I walked around George’s Town and met some locals. Everyone was very friendly, even once I walked out of the touristy section. I walked up a couple of pretty steep roads and got some good pictures of the harbor from a cemetery above the town.

Monday night, Tues morn

I have signed up to be an escort for some of the shore excursions. So far I have not been chosen. Today (Tues) we are in Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic) which seems to be a very interesting island full of rain forests and mountains. I got up early, thinking to go out and find a bike tour, but after getting all coffee’d up and packed for the day, I walked out of the ship to find it’s pouring rain. Abort plan!

Last night was the first really electric night I have had in the piano lounge. I had a room full of 40- and 50-somethings who were ready to party. We brought the house down with some great sing-a-longs and I got to do some of my silly material, like Old MacDonald’s Deformed Farm. The patrons were buying me drinks all night and I even made some tips even though I’m not allowed a tip jar. Some of the Bears appeared and were requesting Broadway, so I pulled some of that material out of my hat. But it was a delicate balance because I think the other patrons were getting put off a bit when I devoted some of the show to making them happy with the Broadway. But all in all, it was a truly great night at the piano bar. After I finished I sat down and drank with a handful of English passengers and we got pretty rowdy after a couple of hours. I think we closed down the entire ship.

I spoke briefly with James, the Senior Assistant Cruise Director. He seemed to be fine and upbeat. Hopefully that’s all said and done with.

Uncomfortable

The Wanderer has made a friend of Senior Assistant Cruise Director, “James” who is third in line from my boss, the Cruise Director, and directly below my day-to-day liason, the Deputy Cruise Director. He is mentioned in a previous entry. It’s important to understand that while James is not my supervisor, he has the ability to give significant input to the Cruise Director regarding my evaluation since James is always out on the floor managing the activities and entertainment on constant basis. In the crew bar the last couple nights James has always asked me how things were going, was I happy, and did I need anything, etc., etc. After the third night of such questioning, I made a joke about everything being great except that I haven’t had sex in almost 2 weeks. Big mistake. From that point forward, both him and his Latin dancer boyfriend came on very strong. We all ended up in a room party in a cabin on deck 11 belonging to one of the other Assistant Cruise Directors and I sat on the bed with 3 other people, a wall to my right and back, and a girl I didn’t know to my left. Within 3 minutes James made the girl move over and trapped me against the wall. James was drunk and kept repeating my cabin number. “You’re in cabin 444, right? I’d really like to come by your cabin tonight. Both me and my bf.” After laughing it off as a joke a couple times, I finally said, “No, that’s not happening.” He told me he understood, but yet he continued. By this time he had made himself quite comfortable with his head resting right in my lap and reached his hand around to touch my leg. The one time his hand wandered accidentally (on purpose) up towards my crotch I physically removed it in a manner that any sober person would clearly understood to mean “stop!” While he did not reach for my crotch again, he stayed with his head in my lap and, after a couple moments had passed, continued telling me how cute I was, blah, blah, blah. Aside from the fact that I wasn’t even remotely attracted to him or his boyfriend, I thought it arrogant of him to presume that because I haven’t had sex in 2 weeks, that I would want to have sex with him! It was an extremely awkward situation because the obvious thought in my head is that I don’t want to wound his pride with a direct rejection and piss him off, causing negative input on my professional evaluation. After enough time had passed so as not be considered rude, I finally managed to extricate myself from James’ head, the bed, and the room party and return to my cabin…alone!

Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh shit!

We turned around in San Juan, Puerto Rico yesterday. The new passenger roster is very different from the last voyage. They are generally younger, with many 30 and 40’s; there are many native Puerto Ricans, many of which aren’t comfortable speaking English; there is a group of 300 Mormons on board; and finally, a group of 250 gay men. When I found out 2 days ago that there would be a large gay group coming on board, I was excited. I thought it would make for a fun cruise, with great dancing, partying and lots of eye candy. But I was, oh so wrong! It turns out that they are a very specific subset of the Gay culture: they are the Bears.

The idealized version of a Bear is a hunky, muscular, masculine man with a lot of chest hair. A man's man! In reality, Bears have evolved to be large, overweight gay men with lots of body hair in unseemly places, especially on their shoulders and back. Whereas many gay men are self-conscious of their weight and their back hair, Bears actual seem to celebrate the abundance of both, perhaps assigning these things as a signs of prosperity and masculinity, or maybe this celebration is merely an unconscious expression of overcompensation for not fitting in with all the beautiful gay boys, and a very human need to belong to a group. I don’t presume to know. Most Bears have large thick bushy goatee’s or mustaches and yet, inexplicably, they trim the hair on the top of their head so that it is almost all trimmed off. Many bears wear leather, although that’s a whole other topic, and on this ship, can generally be found at the buffet on the Lido Deck. Bears seem to be a middle-aged phenomenon, but there are younger guys who are attracted to Bears and they are labeled Cubs. Bear Cubs are simply a younger, smaller version of a Bear. Bears can be tops (active) or bottoms (passive) but Bear Cubs are almost always bottoms. Bears are generally friendly and very approachable, so I’m sure that although they are not going to be visually stimulating to this writer, they will be fun to have on board.

Friday night

Last night was an easy night. I only was scheduled for 90 minutes. When I arrived the room was empty but within 5 minutes there was not an empty seat in the house. That felt nice. I recognized most of the people from previous nights. Tonight will the last night of the cruise and I’m told I must wind it down by midnight or before so that everyone has time to get proper sleep before disembarking tomorrow. Tomorrow night is my night off.

After my short shift last night I watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show on the big screen located outside on the top deck with some of the gay boys I met on this trip. I never really liked that movie and indeed after about an hour I had to leave. I then went to the crew bar for the first time since I’ve been here, now that the red alert has been lifted. It was mellow, and I had a long chat with the Senior Activities director who is third in charge below the Cruise Director, and thus an immediate supervisor of sorts. His boyfriend is a Mexican national and one of the dancers in the production show—the only gay dancer on the ship, I might ad, as I’ve met the other three and they are all straight. Who knew? But anyway, he was said that everyone was very happy with my work and suggested that I let the Cruise Director know that I would be available for future work. Cool.

Finally, in my cabin, I read until I fell asleep. This morning I woke up in St. Thomas. I called on room service for the first time (another thing I couldn’t do during red alert) and got a pot of coffee delivered to my room. Sweet! I have been in my room now all morning drinking coffee and finishing my current book. It’s called Perfume by Patrick Suskind, and it’s a highly original story about a wunderkind perfumer who, as the story progresses, attempts to capture the scent of a virgin pubescent girl. In addition to a brilliant and original plot, the writer through words alone brings the world of scents and smells alive for the reader, rather like describing the concept of color to a blind man. Just as brilliantly, he exposes the twisted thinking and inner workings of the mind of the protagonist. I understand it’s a movie, but I can’t imagine the movie being able to accomplish what the book has done.

Work

Work has been going well. The age of my patrons ranges from 20yo up to 70yo, with the vast majority being in their 50’s and 60’s. As the week progressed I’ve garnered quite a few regulars who have made the job a lot of fun. They aren’t shy about requesting songs, and by now know what I can and cannot do. I find myself doing things like Blue Suede Shoes, Great Balls, Mustang Sally, Buttercup, Daydream Believer, Croc Rock, Killing Me Softly, Mama Don’t Dance, You Lost That Lovin Feeling and NY State of Mind. My two biggest requests here are Sweet Caroline and Piano Man. I’ve been trying to keep it upbeat, but many times they want to hear some mellow tunes like James Taylor or Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight.” So far I haven’t made very much on tips, which is not really essential since I am getting paid a decent wage. We are not allowed to have a tip jar out on the piano, but when someone does hand me a tip, I make a fuss over it on the mic and leave it sitting as conspicuously as possible on top of the piano. Last night I had already goine 30 min past the time I am allowed to stop and yet they wanted me to continue. Hoping to keep me playing, one of my regulars asked me what I was drinking. I told him I was drinking twenty dollar bills. Within moments there was a Dos Equis beer and $40 on the piano. That was worth another 20 minutes. But it’s tricky with the bar staff. I was told by my boss, who is the Cruise Director, that I should continue to play after midnight if I have a crowd. This is fair, as I am only scheduled for 3 hours. So even going into overtime doesn’t really strain me. But the bar staff would prefer I finish at exactly midnight, because they have been working all day and all night. Because of the red alert with the Noro virus, the staff hasn’t had a day off as they have been conscripted into disinfecting the ship when not working their normal stations. So I definitely feel for them and respect all the hard work they do. But it’s a delicate dance because they want me to stop, and yet I’ve been told to keep my show going if there’s a crowd and booze is being sold. And they will never actually tell me to stop because they don’t want to take responsibility for that; they want me to stop of my own accord so that if there is a question about who closed down the bar, they can say that it was the piano player that stopped.

The red alert for the Noro virus has been lifted so the crew bar is open again. During red alert, they had actually suspended handing out the bi-weekly cash wage (paid to non-American crew members) to the crew for fear of the virus being spread through the money. That made people pretty unhappy because most of the crew was expecting to send their pay home in St. Kitts and weren’t able to do it. The other thing that they did during red alert was not allow the crew to serve themselves (buffet style) in the crew mess, but rather be served by the stewards (think cafeteria lunch lady). As a result there was an unreasonably long line to get served. Because the crew has been kept so busy with cleaning tasks in addition to their normal duties, some of them were going hungry because they just didn’t have the time to wait in line.

I have heard that people are still getting sick, but I guess the Captain realized he might have a mutiny on his hands if he wasn’t able to pay or feed the crew properly. And really, I don’t know how effective closing the crew rec area was during the red alert, as the crew just had impromptu parties inside their rooms that spilled out into the hallways. One of these parties was going on two nights ago outside my door with the music staff. Life back in the crew area reminds me of my freshman dorm in college. It’s really not much different.

Cruise, day 2

Yesterday the Capt made a very sobering announcement over the crew-area intercom. Apparently there are crew members that are still getting sick from this “Norovirus” and so more extreme measures will be taken, namely the closing down of the crew bar, crew gym and crew internet. Additionally crew members are not to go into passenger areas unless they are carrying out of their duties. These rules don’t really affect me directly as I am technically a guest and am permitted to use the passenger gym, restaurants and bars. But it is a bit scary, and I’ve taken to disinfecting my hands quite often.

Here are the facts about the Norovirus: It is an extremely common virus, which causes gastroenteritis causing nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Symptoms usually last between 1 and 3 days and generally resolve without treatment or long-term consequences. It is also highly contagious, which is the main issue on board a ship where everyone, especially the crew and staff are living in close quarters.

Because they have closed the crew bar the beverage quartermaster is selling bottles of alcohol directly to the crew members at cost in a sale called “cambooza.” I haven’t figured out the etymology of this word yet, but will report back to you if I do. I’m also going to see if I am allowed to participate in this. I think I am.

On a similar note, I haven’t quite figured out how to get bottled water in my cabin, other than to buy it at passenger prices at the bar. So this morning I woke up at 5:30am extremely thirsty. In my fridge are two Bud Light bottles left for me by my predecessor. Of course they were not twist offs, so I spent the better part of 5 minutes trying to use my apartment key to pry off the top whilst not injuring my hands. Finally after spending way too much time trying to quench my thirst, I fell back asleep. I must say I am really enjoying falling asleep on the boat. The sea has been rather choppy and the back and forth motion of the boat just rocks me to sleep. I am on Deck 7 which is about 3 decks above the surface of the water so the movement is rather gentle. The higher in the ship you are, the more exaggerated the movement is. I found myself not wanting to wake up this morning, mostly due to the hypnotic rocking motion. But when I did, I used the rest of the Bud Light to take my morning vitamins.

I worked the piano lounge for the first time last night. Upon arriving, I couldn’t get the sound to work, so the bartender tracked down one of the sound techs who explained to me how to switch over from the canned music to my system—something he should have explained when we did the sound check on Sunday. As people began to fill up the lounge, I used a lot of the skills I’ve learned with dueling pianos to get them to participate, but it was a struggle. They seemed to want to listen more than anything, but I did manage to get them singing. The cruise director was pleased with my performance which is important. I found it exhausting, and to top it off, I realized I had left my room key in my room. So the night crew supervisor was tracked down for me at 1 am so I could get back home.

All aboard!

Sunday morning made it to Brooklyn where my cruise ship was parked. I will be working the piano lounge for the next 14 days. My arrival at the port and then again on the ship was full of confusion because my travel documents and contract were written out in my legal name, and the ship’s crew supervisor had processed my arrival with my professional name. Once the cruise staff in the port had found my welcome envelope with my room key/charge card, I was instructed to wait in a holding area with a couple thousand other guests while the ship was being disinfected due to an onboard stomach virus the last cruise. (The West Norton Virus, or some shit like that). Nice. After being permitted to board and after even more confusion I was shown to my cabin, whose door had been left open. So it was only after unpacking and then leaving my cabin that I realized my key did not work in the door. More drama.

I have status as a “Guest Entertainer” which means that I am treated as a guest and I have no actual crew or staff duties except to show up at the piano and do my show every night. I am, I’m told, the only member of the entire crew that is permitted room service. As a guest I am encouraged to use all guest facilities and I get a staff discount on all the bars, shops and spa on the ship, and yet I am also permitted to utilize the crew recreation area where I can get drinks for about $1.50, and internet for a quarter of the price charged to regular guests. My cabin is for all intents and purposes a passenger cabin with a large window and a bathroom, but it is located in the crew area. There is a steward assigned to the cabin that cleans it every day, changes the lines and takes care of my dry cleaning and laundry. I also just discovered that I am permitted to bring a guest with me to travel during the length of my contract. My predecessor, who is also a friend of mine, is convinced that the Guest Entertainer’s job is the number one job on the ship, even better than that of the captain or the cruise director. When I arrived in my cabin, he had just vacated it from the last cruise and had left me a couple beers in the fridge along with the vocal mic and the key to the piano in the drawer. It took a few hours for me to connect with the Cruise Director (my boss), so I had to figure out most things on my own. It was confusing, but after asking around, I was able to get my documents all sorted out, my room key corrected, my sound check done, the laundry situation figured out and finally track down the Cruise Director, who by this time had tried calling me several times in my cabin. He and his deputy both seemed very professional and easy-going. They were very clear about what they expected from me, which is something I always appreciate. I was told, sadly, that the ship is still on Red Alert, due to this gastro-intestinal virus and that due to cross contamination concerns I had to choose whether to eat and drink in the crew area or the guest area. As I had already had dinner with the guests, the decision was made for me. I’m disappointed because I was really looking forward to drinking with the crew. But now I must wait for the Red Alert to pass.

My predecessor and friend had negotiated Sunday nights off for me, so I was lucky to have my first night off, which is good, as I had been working the 4 nights prior to Sunday in New York. I spent the first night scouting out the ship, and the bars. It was extremely quiet after 11pm. I hope that was just because everyone was tired from traveling. I’m very excited to do my show tonight. The lounge is actually within a very central and open space, so everyone walking by (which should be most of the ship's passengers) will be able to hear me and have the option of sticking around. I did a sound check and the sound guy preprogrammed a memorized setting for me on the board. The piano is a Yamaha baby grand, and it is voiced very bright but I was able to soften it in the mix. I like the PA system. It works well with my voice.

a Zen sunday

I really love my new neighborhood, and on a normal day the A train takes me express to 42nd street in about 22 minutes. This weekend there was a lot of construction and rerouting in the D, A and F lines that caused my ride from Washington Heights to Soho to be 1 hour 25 minutes, where I was, incidently, going to a Zen meditation. But trying to get back uptown from SoHo to get my music for a rehearsal back in west midtown, and to change my clothes for a nice bar gig in east midtown proved impossible due to the trains. The C wasn’t running at all. The A was running on the local track and only at 20 min intervals. The D was only running up above 34th, and even there although it was supposedly an express train, it was moving maddeningly slowly. The F was skipping stops randomly…different stops depending on whether you were going uptown or downtown, and the rerouting instructions coming from the speakers in the subway cars were indecipherable. Needless to say, my Zen turned to desperation as I realized I would not have time to get home for my music and clothes for a rehearsal and then later a performance. After arriving to the rehearsal 7 minutes late and without my music, I called and asked a friend to come meet me at the rehearsal studio, get my apartment keys, go all the way up to Wash Heights, pick out an outfit for me, grab my microphone and meet me at the bar gig in 90 minutes. I muddle my way through my rehearsal, and travel, in my Zen rags (jeans, ragged t-shirt and open toed sandals), to the fancy French restaurant with the fancy east-side clientele. Within 15 minutes my friend arrives with my outfit, and within moments I change into SUPERpianoMAN, paste on a happy grin and begin my first set with the Charlie Chaplin song, “Smile.”

The Hood

I am now moved into my new apartment in Washington Heights, which is a Latin section of Manhattan, way uptown. Most of the people in my building and in the neighborhood are real families, mostly from Dominican background. (In midtown and in my last neighborhood in Queens there are almost no children.) It's a very colorful neighborhood with lots of small interesting businesses that cater to the hardworking Latin men, women and the children that live in the many 6 and 7 story residential apartment buildings in the area. The rear of all these buildings face towards each other and so you can hear everyone living their lives through their kitchen and bedroom windows, listening to their music, talking to each other, shouting, laughing, singing. It's not so noisy to be intrusive, but the evenings are energetic to be sure. One of the residents of the block is a very accomplished opera singer. She practices in the evenings and is better than most of the singers I've heard at the City Opera in Lincoln Center. I hope I get to meet her one day. When I practice my own music I am well aware that many people on the block can hear me if I have the windows open. Living around monied white people, I was always self-conscious of leaving the windows open while practicing. But in this neighborhood, somehow it seems natural and right. It's just one more contribution to the vibrant symphony of life that is played out every night here.

Many of the store owners and employees here don't speak English. Now it's been 4 years since I last took Spanish lessons, so I'm pretty rusty, and thus seem to provide a continual source of amusement for the natives here as I stumble through my botched Spanish to ask for a laundry pickup or pizza delivery. But it's nice to be able to buy a laundry bag that would cost $7 in Bed Bath and Beyond in midtown, for $1 in my neighborhood dollar store. One of the most interesting sights in this store was an impossibly large pile of pregnancy testing kits behind the register. That, coupled with the fact I've seen many young nubile latin girls, and almost none of them visibly pregnant invites some interesting speculation. I've been trying out a gym nearby and unlike the gyms in midtown, most of the men are busy building muscle mass with the free weights and couldn't give a damn about cardio exercise or body fat. There's loud salsa music everywhere, and huge avocados and mangoes are for sale on the sidewalks next to taco carts and knock-off DVD's. Outside the clothing stores live plastic mannequins with ghetto butts that generously fill out $7 pairs of women's jeans. Amid all this activity I found a very peaceful, quiet Japanese restaurant that I've already visited twice.

It's now 5:20am. Time for this musician to go to bed. After all I have to be in work at 9:30. (ummm...at night).

Tipping the Piano Player

These last two weeks I have been working a piano bar gig in Midtown for a friend of mine. Now in the beginning of the night, I'm playing dinner music for the dining crowd, but after 10 or so, I kick it up a notch and begin a more interactive show. Last night I was reminded of how different people tip or don't tip the piano player.

First there are the people who leave the dining room and walk right past the piano without so much as a glance. The same piano which they have been listening to (and dare I presume to say, enjoying) throughout out their entire dinner . To these people, as they go by I make it a point to personally address them, smile widely and say "Thank you!" I don't specify what I'm thanking them for, of course. (Thanks for dining with us; thanks for the tip you are about to give me; or, thanks for nothing you cheap bastards.) Of this first group, about 25% of them will realize that they have forgotten to tip me (because my tip jar is right there as they turn around to respond to me) and they may continue walking out but come right back with a tip and a smile. Another 50% will turn to me and give me some version of a tight lipped smile and maybe say thank you back, but continue out the door, their precious purse change in tact, and then of course there are the 25% who don't even acknowledge that I have addressed them at all.

Then there is the second group: the ostentatious tippers. They are divided into two categories. The ostentatious BIG tippers (think bond traders out with their girl du jour) and the ostentatious CHEAP tippers (many times drunk middle-aged women). Now the first category has paid a large part of my rent for the past 12 years. They are the ones who will make damn sure you know that they have tipped, and exactly the amount of their tip. Sometimes they will bypass the tip jar entirely and put their $20 or $100 bills in your hand, and give you knowing look that says, Look at me, I want you to know that I am tipping you and it's not insignificant. These are not the people that are giving anonymous donations to the red cross after a major hurricane, but I still appreciate them nonetheless even though they sometimes make me feel like a well paid whore. Italian wannabe mobsters that want to sing My Way, or New York, NY for the entire bar fall squarely into this category. Then there is the second category. The woman who will do a little rain dance in front of the tip jar with their $1 bill in hand, waving it around as a banner of their graciousness so that not only do i know they are tippers, but the world knows. They think if they bring attention to the fact that they tipped, the actual penurious amount will be overlooked in a fit of gratitude on my part. Wrong! I hope there is a special section of Hell where these people end up waiting tables at a greasy spoon for all eternity and getting under tipped in such a spectacular fashion.

Then there are the ones who will tip $10 or $20 with no fanfare at all. These people are saying yes I appreciate what you are doing here, and we don't need to remind each other that you are dependant on my generosity to make your living. These people allow us pianists to retain our dignity and still pay the rent. The archangels of this group, which is the rarest of rare, are the $50 and $100 tippers who actually try to hide the amount of their tip so as not to bring attention to themselves or their tip. There is nothing as sweet as counting your tips at the end of a long night of New York, NY and Piano Man, and finding an unexpected $100 bill folded in four among all the other bills.

Finally and most humorously are the cheap tippers that try to hide their cheapness. These are the ones that tip a single dollar but will push it deep in the (clear glass) tip jar so that they think it's impossible for me to discern the tip amount. What they don't realize is that I've been doing this for too long am too dependant on the amount of their tips to be fooled by such an amateur move. The biggest clue is when they hide the bill in their palm and reach their hand down into the jar, past the lip of the (clear glass) jar as though they were about to draw out the winning number for a reverse raffle. And no matter how much they attempt to hide their faux pas, I can usually tell when they remove their hand, which bill has been added to the (did i say it was clear glass?) jar. It's almost always a single dollar bill, but sometimes, it's actually coins and they are hoping that the coins will be soundless as they fall to the bottom of the glass jar, which is why their hand goes so far down into the jar. If I catch people putting coins in, I will first determine if its a dollar coin. If it is I will begrudgingly leave them alone. But God and the host of Angels help them if it is not. I will shamelessly draw attention to the fact that this gentleman just tipped me 55 cents, and sir, no I'm not the crosstown bus, thank you very much! Now there is a special subsection of these discrete cheap tippers. These are the ones that later in the evening try to tell me that they have tipped me $10 or $15 or $20 throughout the course of the night, and for that reason I should play New York, NY for their overly mascaraed girlfriend. It is rare, but it happens. Invariably they are the most demanding patrons.

I send them publicly to hell.

I explain over the microphone that no, they have not tipped me $20. They in fact only tipped me $1, and I specifically remember. It was 25 minutes ago, they came over on their way to the bathroom, reached deep into my tip jar just like this (I demonstrate), and placed a folded $1 bill on the left side of the jar where they thought I wouldn't be able to see it, and this is their tip (I withdrawal their bill with a David Copperfield-like flourish). Sometimes they will fold immediately and reach into their tight wallet and quickly try to remedy the situation with a belated cash penance,...and then sometimes they will try to argue with me. If they do this, I ask them exactly what denomination they tipped in, and then proceed to explain to them how that is impossible because the only $20 bills in the tip jar came from John standing over there and Felicia sitting right there (I point) and I saw them being put in. (Thanks, by the way, Felicia and John.) It's quite a show I put on!

Then there was the well-heeled gentleman who tipped me with a Metrocard that he swore had an $18 credit on it. I reluctantly gave him the benefit of the doubt as there was no way of verifying it at the time, of course, but when I got in the subway I found out, not suprisingly that the prick had given me an expired unlimited card. He then came back the following week and tried to tip me again with another Metrocard then pretended to forget that he had done it the week before! Big Mistake. By the time I was done with him, he had paid me off $50 in shush money. It's ugly work, this piano playing stuff!

Update

Finally, I am moved into my new place in Manhattan and yesterday the internet arrived. I can finally log into my bank accounts and all that stuff with a secure connection, instead of leaching off someone elses wifi. Does anyone know what the "fi" stands for? I don't. This week I got back to my meditation on Monday night. I have not seen the inside of a gym in over 3 weeks due to my cold which is now finally 95% out of my system. Today I got the "joining letter" for my cruise gig in 1.5 weeks. Last week I ran into my favorite NYC realtor, Dennis, on 5th ave and he told me that his (very sucessful) business has dropped to nothing in the past month. Oy! The stock market, which I follow daily has been taking me (and everyone else) for quite a ride. I very timidly bought a teeny tiny position today in an oil services ETF which is at a third of what it was three months ago. I'm trying to look at this crash as a buying opportunity, although I wish I had more cash to buy these "bargains". I'm eyeing Apple stock. It's been beaten down over 50% in the past 4 months. Don't know if my tennant will renew in January, but I'm committed to continuing to rent out my apartment for the forseeable future. I was offered a job back in MO, at the same place I was let go of, due to my "inexperience" 3 months ago. I turned them down.

One of my piano bar patrons in NC

Holding on

I finished my month long NC trip and now I'm back in New York. The last week I was in NC I was fighting off a cold throughout my work weekend. The night that I returned home it finally got me. For the past 5 days I've been down with a stuffy head, a low-grade fever and a sore throat, but I am finally feeling a bit better now. In addition to being ill, I am moving my apartment next week so I have been dealing with piano movers and utility companies, landlords and leases. On top of that I finally submitted my taxes while simultaneously watching the stock market spasm into worthlessness as it took congress too damn long to finally get their act together with this rescue plan. Now it may be a little too late, I'm afraid. I am worried that the next 5 years may be really difficult economically. I think I'll be ok, because in times of economic strife, the bars always seem to do better than most other businesses.

I watched the VP debate last night along with 70 Million others, hoping for a gaffe-filled circus show. What I got instead was two great performances from each of the two candidates. I was impressed with Joe Biden and there were moments in the debate that he showed real strength and charisma. Sarah Palin, who I have come to believe is smart, sharp and also highly ignorant about things she will need to know as a VP, put on a masterful performance last night considering the limited time she has had to prepare for this candidacy. It wasn't nearly enough to actually help the floundering Republicans, but I doubt anyone could have hoped for any better.

I move on Wednesday into my new digs in Manhattan and begin a 3 weekend pianobar gig in the city.

Will the lights be on tomorrow night?

The lights are still on this evening. Everyone must be working furiously to get their resumes updated and posted on Monster.com. I took this picture tonight in Times Square. Look closely.

Playing blindfolded

So I finally did the blindfolded performance. It was a benefit for the blind administered by the local Lion's Club. My dueling partner dreamed this up. He would play onstage for 24 hours with a blindfold on. There were 3 other pianists that rotated through the opposite piano for the entire 24 hours, also with blindfolds so that my partner was never up there alone. It was quite an experience to do a dueling show blindfolded. You can't see the audience, and therefore the interaction with them is difficult. We had spotters behind us that would read us the requests and tell us when someone tipped or when someone donated to the Lion's fund. In general, once I had my finger positioning I was fine as long as i didn't try to jump more than one octave. Sometimes I would loose your spot on the keyboard, thinking I was playing a G chord when I was actually playing a C chord. The few times that this happened I was able to stop playing completely and luckily my partner was playing correctly, and I'd continue singing while trying to locate my correct finger positioning. It was also tricky when my partner began a song in a key I didn't know. I would first have to locate the key by finding the root note on my keyboard by sound, and then using my fingers to discern which note/key I was playing. All in all it was a challenging task but the crowd gave us such love and all 4 pianists (and one drummer) had such a great attitude that it was great fun. All in all we raised over $5,000. And now I know i can do this shit blindfolded. I'm back in NYC for 3 days before headed back south for another 2 weeks.

Reciprocity

I worked a dueling job recently and was not invited back after my initial contract expired. I was told by the entertainment director that although he, himself liked my skills, a couple of the other house pianists didn't want to work onstage with me because I was too green and my music skills weren't sufficient. The E.D. is himself a weak player and generally defers to the opinions of the more experienced players. This upset me for many reasons. First, I my music skills are better than most that begin in this gig, secondly, I knew I just needed stage time and I would improve quickly. My music skills aren't really the issue. It's learning the syntax of this format. Thirdly, before he ever called me he was told that I was very new to this format and was looking for a working/training situation to improve my skills and get stage time. Finally, I know that my two detractors had once been green in this gig and mostly likely had to acquire skills after making many of the same mistakes that they were complaining about from me.

I come to find out that one of these pianists (let's call him "WhiskeyVoice") that didn't want me back ended up getting fired from the very same gig and came crawling to my current entertainment director and dueling partner, "Guinness" looking for work. So when I arrived to work last week, I found myself playing opposite WhiskeyVoice. After the gig was over he let me know how impressed he was with how far I had come in such a short time. I told him thanks, but no thanks to him. He stumbled over himself trying to explain his actions but I didn't really want to hear it. A few days later WhiskeyVoice called my current dueling partner (Guinness) and asked him again for work. Guinness, a very experienced dueler and no fool, responded by saying, "Oh I hear that you worked with Eddie before." WhiskeyVoice again stumbled over himself trying to explain why he blocked me from getting rebooked. Guinness suggested that perhaps it might be more helpful in the future to nurture and help the new talent rather than impede their progress, and no, he was not able to offer WhiskeyVoice any work at this time.

Intervention with Kristin Chenoweth

See more Kristin Chenoweth videos at Funny or Die

Sixteen dollar a pound chicken breast

A market opened up across the street from my apartment building. It's one of those real fancy ones that try and be like Whole Foods, with the organic foods and all that. So I was all excited as I entered the first time...that was until I saw the Chicken Breast. It was $16 per pound. I'm not exaggerating. Now, grant it, it was boneless, dye free, antibiotic, organic and grass feed, raised in a farm yard, not a cage, probably went to chicken dances on fri nights and had a feather bed to plop down in her hutch with a view after a long day of lounging around the barn yard and and all that. But really...SIXTEEN DOLLARS?? Who can afford this? And, even if you could, why would you pay $16 to give a chicken the good life before you killed it, threw it in the stew and masticated its tender blue-blood flesh? I mean for that money, I expect soooo very much more. I want to know what the chicken's name was. I want to know it's chick-hood nickname that only her mommie used? I want photos and hand-written letters from the chicken as it grew up, thanking me for sponsoring it's life of leisure. I want periodic video messages showing the chicken having fun at the thursday night mixers and the sunday morning brunches I paid for. I want a fucking ashtray made by the chicken, personalized to me. I want to know what the chicken's hobbies were, it's fears, it's hopes, how it spent its time in the barn yard. I want a letter from the grieving organic, grass-fed, gluten-free goose who was the chicken's lover and long-time companion detailing the chicken's final days and last words. THAT'S WHAT I WANT FOR MY SIXTEEN FUCKING DOLLARS!!!!!

blindfolded

In June I booked a dueling piano gig down south for the month of September. My entertainment director just called me 3 days ago and asked me if I was able to do the show blindfolded. Apparently he is doing some benefit for some blind kids and is playing 24 hours with a blindfold. Since I am scheduled to be up on stage with him for 5 of those hours, he wants me blindfolded also. Like this gig isn't difficult enough with my eye's open!! He told me that we would have someone standing behind us to tell us what was going on with the audience and the written requests. Now, I want to be a good sport so I began practicing today with a blindfold (my favorite college shirt from a gizzillion years ago rolled up and tied around my head), and at first it was really hard. I actually felt myself wanting to hyperventilate. But what I found after a while was that it limited my distractions and I was able to practice for a full 60 minutes without getting up and checking my email or my chat programs or the NY Times, etc. etc. And, although some of my left hand notes were inaccurate, it actually put me into a higher state of concentration and I was more involved with the musiic. When I was finished I didn't even want to remove the blindfold. I'll let you know how it goes in performance.

Overheard

Overheard in a conversation between a couple walking in the opposite direction that I was walking: "...Kids aren't stupid; they're smarter than most adults...."

I immediately thought, if that's true, which I think it is, maybe it's because kids don't "know" as much as adults, and are thus more likely to experience things deviod of judgement and preconception.

Mia Dona revisited 5 months later

In my blog entry for March 3, I spoke of my experience with the then new restaurant, Mia Dona on E 58th St in Manhattan. I noted that it was a great study in how to do a restaurant right but that I also had some very specific issues with some of the dishes. Well, last night I went out for a birthday diner with two dear friends at Mia Dona. My one friend was in the process of ordering the octopus appetizer and I warned her off saying I remember it being too salty. The server turned to me and suggested that I must have had it when the restaurant first opened and they have since "fixed" it. Apparently there had been a lot of feedback that the dishes were too salty. He also told me that the fries are no longer pickled in vinegar before being fried. You may recall that I had said in my blog entry that the fries were very good, but so bold that they overpowered everything else. Apparently that was the general consensus.

We went on to have a superb meal with great food and service. I have not one negative thing to say about this experience with Mia Dona. When I had first eaten there in March I had filled out a comment card saying I really enjoyed the experience but that the fries were too bold and the octopus and the pork chops were too salty. I'm guessing that I was not the only person to say so. How gratifying to see a management that is responsive to their customers. Now it is the perfect restaurant! A great vision, and superbly executed.

Random wierd guy

Tuesday night at 1:00am a couple my friends and I were walking from the Apple store on 5th Ave, over to this bar where we are friends with the bartender. As we crossed over Park Ave on 58th, there was a man standing on the corner, carrying nothing but a flat 9 x 11 manila envelope. As he saw us he made an initial advance towards us, presumably to engage us in conversation. My first thought was he was a wierdo and all three of us continued past him in our typical New Yorker fashion. On second thought, maybe he was lost and needed to be pointed back to Times Square. I turned back around and asked him if he was ok. He said very agressively and drunkenly, "Yes, I'm ok! Are you ok?" Alright, wierdo status confirmed. I didn't respond and we continued walking away from him. He then shouted at us that we were big dickheads. We quickened our pace, while he began walking/staggering in the same direction as we were headed, occasionally yelling . And don't you know, he ends up at the very same bar that our friend is working at. He actually got there first as we had made a small detour before arriving. As we came in, he moved his body to block our path, and we physically had to shove our way past him to escape from him once again. He had already found the only male hustler in the club and is groping his, um...merchandise and kissing him in a sloppy drunken way. The mysterious manila envelope is on the bar top. Once the hustler realizes that this guy is not going to "buy", he disengages and the man asks the bartender (our friend) to hold the envelope behind the bar for safe-keeping while he trolls the outside patio. The envelope has never been folded, and looks like it contains no more than 10 sheets of paper. It's rather unwieldy to carry around on a night out on the town, which leads me to believe the contents are important to him, otherwise, he'd have folded it up and shoved it in his pocket. We immediately egg our bartender friend on to show us the contents of the envelope, which he does. It was......a handout from his Anger Management class.

Stocks I like for a 5 year horizon

I was asked for some stock advice by a friend today and I figure I would post my response on my blog so I can go "on the record" with my opinions:

Everyone hates stocks now, which is the correct time to get in. All the economic downturn fears are priced in to the stocks! So you don't have to worry about an economic downturn. You're already receiving that discount! If you are looking for a long time horizon I'd park a couple thousand in the following:

Devon Energy (DVN): This is a longterm play on Oil and on Natural Gas. They derive half their income on each. The share price just took a major hit in the past 2 weeks since the price of oil and nat gas tanked. It's a great company and a good stock. It has been volitile as of late, but if you believe as I do that the price of energy will continue to march up in the next 5 and 10 years, don't worry if it looses value. It will come back. I originally bought it at $55 around 2 years ago and sold it at $111 a few months ago. I just bought back in last week at $91. That's about where it is today. I don't expect this stock to go below $75, but even if it does I will pick up more, for sure.

Goldman Sachs (GS): This company boasts the best minds on Wall Street and the most repected investment bank in the world. They were one of the few financials that were smart enough to get out of the mortgage investments before that hit the fan. They just got downgraded today because they are highly exposed to stocks and the analists feel that their profit is limited with the current bear market. This drove the stock price down. If you believe as I do that the stock market is a good investment on the whole, and for the long term, this company is a must have. The closing price today is a perfect entry point. Remember, you buy low, when everyone else is selling. The price has been driven down by people with a short time horizon.

PXJ - This is an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that tracks the oil services industry as a whole. It is a bet on the sector that provides the drill bits and oil platforms, etc, etc to the oil exploration and the drilling companies. This sector was run up along with oil this year and when oil busted 2 weeks ago, this sector took a correction along with it. In my opinion it was not warrented, because most of the oil explorations and drillings are profitable with a price of oil over $60/barrel. Today after the current rundown from $140, oil is still at $112/barrel. Another note: During the 70's oil crisis, the oil services sector was run up over 1000%.

General Electric (GE) - This stock price has been run down recently. It's got a good dividend and is one of the best managed companies in the world. They recently entered an agreement with the Saudis, I think, where they agreed to buy a good chunk of the company over the next few years. What this does is put a continued upward pressure on the price of the stock, or conversely, it puts a floor on the price. It's got great international exposure and thus is not dependant on a strong dollar to make money.

Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM) - One of the best managed oil producers and refiners in the world. It's stocks been run down alot. The reasons for this price action are complex and I can't really explain it here. But it is a great company and a good long term bet.

Simon Property Group (SPG) - this is a Real Estate Investment Trust (a.k.a. a REIT). that owns, manages and developes retail real estate properties consisting primarily of regional malls, Premium Outlet centers, The Mills, and community/lifestyle centers. David Simon is the CEO and is one of the smartest names in the business. This may be a risky short term play, but luckily you aren't going to play for the short term. Real estate has been beaten down as you know, and may continue to be for some time but it will inevitably come back. Also, it's a bet on retail which is very much out of favor right now. My suggestion with this stock is to put a buy order in around $85 (It's at $97 today) and if it continues to decrease in price then BUY MORE! This is definately a long term play, but a good one. About 6 months BEFORE the economy turns around whether in 1 year or in 3 years, this stock will quickly rise and be a superstar.

My suggestion to you is to place some money in each of these stocks and let them ride for at least 5 years. Don't think about it, don't worry about, just do it and then forget about. Some of them may decrease in value from month to month. Some of them will increase. This is ok. That's what stocks do. These are not high risk plays and if this little 6-stock portfolio doesn't make you money in 5 years, then our entire economic model is in trouble, and this little stock bet will be the least of your economic woes. Finally, don't wait for the economy to turn around and the news to be rosy. Stock prices rise 6 months before the economy turns around. The market is a forward looking beast. The downturn has been, for the most part, priced in currently. Perfect investment time.