Things you wanna do before you die

When my (now) roommate "L" and I first met we were involved in an incident at a piano bar where I had worked at the time. It happened the week after 9/11, and only 1 mile from "ground zero." Tensions were high, of course and on this fateful night I was working behind the piano and "L" was there in the audience. Also in the audience was my crew of Monday night regulars, many of them ossified onto the bar stools upon which they had sat for many years. There was a temper flare, and one of the regulars (let's call him "Mike") badly insulted both me and my new friend. I lost my temper...I can truly say it was the only time in the past decade that I have ever lost my temper. I made a scene, or should I say exacerbated the existing scene. What came out of that night was a three year relationship with my new friend "L" and an animosity between me and "Mike" that lasted for years. I lost that job about a month or so later, and to this day I don't know if that scene had anything to do with it. But regardless, it was a good job to have, and an even better one to loose after having cut my teeth at the place for 2 years. Over the years, I have made peace with Mike, who before 9/11 had been my friend. Meanwhile "L" and I have gone from being lovers to ex-lovers to best friends and finally roommates (sans privileges, thank you very much!) Last night I brought "L" back to the scene of the crime, and there was Mike, sitting at the piano, 8 years later. "L" had really never forgiven "Mike" for this incident, but there we all were, and by the end of the night "L" and "Mike" were buying drinks for each other like they were old friends. There was hugs, tears and promises of everlasting friendship, etc, etc. A beautiful thing!

My own private jet

So i was at a piano bar in the village last night, hanging out with a friend. I was asked to sing a song, so I sang You Go To My Head, one of my very favorite jazz ballads. After I was done, this guy that was sitting at the piano drinking his vodka martini was so very impressed with me that he hands me a very cryptic business card which identifies him as the "Chairman" of a limited liability corporation with some acronym or other that I had never heard of. He tells me to call the number on the card on Monday morning and tell his assistant to put me in touch with him. The mere fact that I have his card will establish my bonafides with said assistant, he says. With a flourish he makes his grand exit from the piano, leaving the martini sitting there, half finished.......Ummmm....ok.

Five minutes later he returns. He immediately begins grousing about someone taking his martini away. (The barback must have cleared the piano of abandoned drinks). After we get through that he asks me what I'm doing next week. I tell him I have a flexible schedule. He asks if I could be in LA. I said, sure, if there was a reason to be there. "What if I were to send my private jet to pick you up?" He then goes on to tell me that his holding company (mysterious acronym on business card) of which he is chairman, owns a world-wide talent management company, XYZ..."surely you've heard of them?" Yes, of course. Well, I am so impressed with your singing that I want them to meet with you, blah, blah, blah.

Well, having worked in NYC for many years, I have to tell you that I've heard this all before, although never with the private jet coming to pick me up. I have to admit, that's a new twist. And of course, you gotta follow this through, on the extraordinarily slim chance that this guy might be for real. So, on Monday morning (11:30am, after my coffee, thank you very much) I will happily call his assistant and find out what time I need to be on the tarmac. What fun!!!

Oh, yeah...a foot note to the story: Some black guy with a voice wandered over to the piano after we had finished talking. My fancy chairman asks if he would sing "Sing Low, Sweet Chariot." Oy-fucking-vey!!

Two Girls, One Cup

Am I the last person to see this video???!!!

Ok...so i watched it. I didn't know what it was but I knew I was expected to react. Because of this expectation I didn't want to react. But it's just about an impossible task. I reacted. Then I watched some of the reaction videos on YouTube. Grandma and Kermit were my two favorites. I immediately began thinking of bits for dueling pianos. If you listen to the original Two Girls, One Cup video, there is a very distinct music track consisting of a piano and synthesized strings. If I were to play that music on stage, would people recognize it? Two Girls, One Cup is now part of our popular culture. If you watch the original video it certainly makes an indelible impression. I can't help but wonder if that impression would include the innocuous background music? When a traumatic event occurs, don't all your senses imprint? And if after watching the original video you then go on to watch all the reaction videos(which I did) you hear the original soundtrack in the backround several more times. Enough to imprint? Perhaps. And if people do recognize the music as I play it onstage, what will they do? How will they react? I think they will scream and stomp their feet and say...Oh my God!! Do you know what he's playing????!!!!

The Fall

I saw a film called The Fall yesterday. (And it is a film, for those of you that understand the lexicon) It will probably get forgotten in a couple of weeks by a movie public infatuated with superheros, comics and reiterations of Rambo and Indiana, two franchises that should have never been allowed to be sequeled after 20 years. I mean really! But back to The Fall. I was so enthralled by the trailer (see below), that I had to see it. I was not dissappointed. This film offers some of the finest photography and cinematography I've ever seen. Absolutely breathtaking. Catinca Untaru is the 10 year old actress that plays the main character, Alexandria. I don't recall having ever seen more authentic acting. Ever. See this perfomance before it leaves the big screen.

Avalon - the evil corporation

I live in a very new hi-rise building directly across the river from Manhattan. This is our pool. It is two lanes wide, although the second lane has been truncated to give space to the lovely concrete box that is one of the stairwells. The pool opened for the very first time today, memorial day. The idea of a pool is nice, of course, but this pool and surrounding deck is way too small for the 600 apartments it serves. This picture was taken at 11:30am. The shady part of the deck has marched inexorably Northwards squeezing the occupants into a smaller and smaller space for sunbathing. Whoever designed the building clearly didn't account for the shadow a 39 floor building would cast upon a pool deck located on the 9th floor. Another thing that really irritates me is that they only purchased 8 (count them, eight...for 600+ apartments!) deck chairs. When the chairs arrived, they were artistically situated diagonally and spaced apart in such a way that they used up much of the space of the West side of the deck--in the same way that lazy students use a word processor to make 2 pages of information look like 5 pages. No doubt the entire setup was built only so that the building could boast a pool. There was no real consideration for the actual usage of the pool. It's way too small, overcast most of the day, and to ad insult to injury, the rich corporation (Avalon) that I write my rent check to skimped on the number of deck chairs. But with the Manhattan views the pool deck offers, it will sure make a great picture in the promo brochure.

Taxes

I just read an entry on a friend's blog that he received his tax refund. To be honest, I have not filed my tax return for the past 2 years. It's not that I don't owe taxes (I do) or that I morally object to how this government chooses to spend my tax money (and I do, oh how I do!), or that given the chance I would cheat the government out of their fair share (doesn't everybody?)...no, it's much more elemental than that. I have such a strong aversion to sitting down with those papers and making sense and order out of them. And what makes this just plain stupid is that I have an accountant who is going to fill out the forms for me. All I have to do is send him the appropriate papers and fill out a questionaire. And yet here I am, spending time writing about how I hate doing it, rather than just simply doing it! All other areas of my life are in order...why is this such a problem.

Sunday morning at the Turkish Baths

After a night of moderate drinking, I woke this morning to my roommate shaking me and telling me it was time to go to the Bathhouse. After a hastily downed cup of French Roast (Gourmet Garage), we took two trains and one bus and a 10 minute walk to land us in the lower east side of Manhattan where we entered the Turkish and Russian Baths. Apparently Sundays are "all-male" day, which I guess means that it is coed the rest of the week. There was a Hassaidic Jew replete with curls, etc. in front of us. As we came up to the counter we placed all valuables in a little safe deposit box, was given a locker key and pointed to the locker room. After undressing and wrapping impossibly small towels around our waists, we went down a narrow flight of stairs where there were 4 saunas, 2 steam rooms each of varying temperatures, and one ice cold dipping pool. We began in one of the steam rooms, and after 10 minutes went into the least hot sauna, slowly working our way up to the absurdly ridiculously hot sauna, and finally jumping into the ice cold water. It was quite a process, and my head was certainly cleared after all the snot ran uncontrollably out of my nose. After the two final temperature extremes, upon exiting the cold water, my body felt as if it had just been rubbed down with menthol. The other clientele were a mixture of gay men, and presumably straight Russians and Turks. Best of all...not one tourist. There was some discrete cruising but nothing tawdry or obscene. Once of the things I liked was that I never felt as though I had to pose. With sweat pouring out of every possible gland, and snot running down your nose, along with everybody else, you can just relax and not worry about looking pretty. In a city where appearance is everything, this is a neutral ground indeed. I probably won't go back, though. It was too cramped, damp and poorly lit for a truly relaxing experience. And I'm not sure all of the torture I put myself through in those temperature extremes was worth the effort. My head was clear, however, when I left, and since we were in a Polish neighborhood, we found a cute Polish diner where we had our first meal at 2pm. Perogies and omelettes on the patio.

Rockin' out down South

I just returned from the South where I did my first real dueling gig. I worked 4 nights and one afternoon with several different piano players and drummers. Armed with my 55 memorized songs I am proud to say I kicked some butt. Each night was different, with Saturday night being the absolute craziest. The club was filled to capacity. There were 3 of us that rotated on 2 pianos, so it was 1 hour onstage, and 1/2 hour offstage, then back up again. The drummer was situated downstage behind the two baby grands. The audience on Saturday night was packed with a lot of military guys that had just arrived stateside from Afganistan and Iraq, many of them finished their final tour and were getting out of the military within the week. We were rocking, we were getting filthy and we were having a ton of fun, and the room loved every second of it. So this is the payoff for all the work and the practicing and the memorizing...and it's damn worth it! So now, the work continues...learning and memorizing more and more songs and comedy bits. But, what a payoff. This could possibly be about the funnest job in the world. The next post I'll tell you about the redneck drama.

The Holy Bible

It reads as follows:

Warning: This is a work of fiction. Do NOT take it literally.

Content Advisory: Contains verses descriptive or advocating suicide, incest, bestiality, sadomasochism, sexual activity in violent context, murder, morbid violence. use of drugs or alcohol, voyeurism, revenge, undermining of authority figures, lawlessness and human right violations and atrocities.

Exposure Warning: Exposure to contest for extended periods of time or during formative years in children may cause delusions, hallucinations, decreased cognitive and objective reasoning abilities and, in extreme cases, pathological disorders, hatred, bigotry and violence, including, but not limited to fanaticism, murder, and genocide.

The Judy Garland Show

It happened. Another Judy Garland tribute show held at the Duplex. I was surprisingly pleased with how it went. My singer got through her show and the audience (mostly her friends) really enjoyed it. She started out nervous and was rushing through things, and I was able to make her take things a bit less seriously through some unscripted onstage interaction. I was complimented after the show by many of the people who attended, specifically upon the energy and repoire between myself and the singer. That made me happy. I really felt as though I did a nice job supporting her, and that of course is the totality of my job once the lights come up. There was one very important NYC cabaret personage in the audience that saw me perform, I believe for the first time. It was all good. The singer (Judy) asked if I would continue to be her music director for future shows, and I'm excited to to do so as I have many things to teach her...things that have been passed on to me from those wiser and more experienced.