Yearly Archives: 2013

All of my music is on minidiscs and LPs

When I was fourteen or fifteen I got my parents to buy me a Sony minidisc player for my birthday. It was cool for about a month or so, I felt like I was on the cutting edge of the future. I remember taking this trip into the city to shop at the Virgin Megastore, one of the only places that actually sold music on the minidisc format. And yeah, there was a minidisc section, half a wall really, right next to the collection of LPs.

I looked through the artists, there wasn’t really anybody that I had ever heard of before. But I went there to buy minidiscs, so I settled on Pearl Jam Vitology, even though I already owned it on CD, it didn’t matter, now I could listen to it on minidisc.

This was right around the time of Napster, when I could dial-up to the Internet and hope that nobody would pick up the second phone line for the six or so hours it would take me to illegally download “My Own Worst Enemy” by Lit. Multiply that process by twenty, and bam, I could make my own minidisc mixtape.

They were just like cassettes, but digital. What did that mean? I had no idea, and after a while, the whole process of taking the expensive minidisc player out of the velvet pouch it came packaged in, just so I could listen to the same twenty or so songs over and over again, it began to feel like a chore, one that I couldn’t avoid, because I had asked for this expensive piece of equipment. If I didn’t use it, if I didn’t at least put an effort into getting some sort of satisfaction out of it, then what did it say about me, about my choice in cool presents, in my vision of the future?

It’s like, if I weren’t a little kid when Nintendo’s Virtual Boy came out, I would have been one of the first suckers in line at the video game store. I guess every once in a while some new technology comes out and, even if it winds up failing, there are always going to be a few people stuck with a bunch of leftover useless pieces of hardware.

Years later, somewhere toward the end of college, I decided to swing in the opposite direction, to get into records. It started when I walked past some record shop in the city, I found a bunch of used LPs in a box and I thought, OK, this could be a pretty cool hobby. I think I might have bought Vitology again.

But this was even worse. Instead of limitations, there were way too many options in a still niche field, record collecting. I bought an old record player on eBay. Right after I made the purchase, I found an old turntable in my parents’ basement. Neither of them worked right. I tried opening them up and changing the belts. It was useless. By the time I finally got something to play, I found that if the volume was up too loud, it would cause the needle to skip and mess up the playback.

For a couple of years I had this whole setup just collecting dust in my bedroom. Eventually my parents packed everything up into boxes, who knows, maybe someday my future kids will throw them away after I’m dead.

I don’t even have all of my old CDs anymore. Everything’s online. And it’s so much better. Every once in a while I’ll read an op-ed online, something about how digital music is terrible, how we’re losing so much audio fidelity. I couldn’t care less. I don’t have time to play with manual settings or figure out how to operate all of these different mediums. It’s so much easier to click and play. And besides, all of my headphones kind of suck anyway, so I doubt that I’d be able to even tell the difference anyway.

If I ever get my hands on a time machine, well, I have a list of things I’d like to go back and stop myself from doing. And numbers thirty-seven and forty-two on that list are, “Stop myself from asking for that minidisc player,” and “Don’t walk past that record shop,” respectively.

I hate to brag

I don’t want to brag, but I can totally slam-dunk. Like, I don’t need a running start, just give me the ball, get me right under the net, and it’s just, “Boom-shaka-laka!” just like from that old NBA Jam game, only in real life, and that’s really my voice, I just shouted it out, right as I was dunking. And I don’t care if this is just a friendly scrimmage, what, I don’t tell you to not shoot threes. And so what, if you don’t want to keep losing to me in HORSE, maybe you should learn how to dunk. Dunk. H. Dunk. O. I’m sorry, but I’m not even sorry, I’m just being polite, because there are plenty of short guys in the NBA that can dunk, so work on it, ride the exercise bike, I’ve heard that helps increase the vertical leap.

And I’m not trying to rub it in or anything, but did I tell you that I just got a huge bonus at work? And that was on top of that raise that I was telling you about last week. Like, I expected the raise to come in, that was a guarantee. And yeah, I guess I did expect the bonus too, but I didn’t want to brag, I’m trying to stay humble, to not let all of this money get to my head. Because it was a lot of money. Even if I were pretending to be humble, I wouldn’t really have to, the humbling was automatic, I was humbled by the size of that check, I was just like, “Woooow,” and my boss just stuck out his hand, “You earned it! Keep up the good work!”

Because dude, I am just killing it this year. Did I tell you about my trainer? Did I tell you about the feature they ran about me in Transactions magazine? Do read Transactions? Yeah, but did I tell you they’re planning on doing a follow-up? They’ve got me tagged as one of the top transactioners of 2013, and they set me up with this camera guy, it was like a whole photo shoot.

Yeah, you saw those guys on the sidelines, right? Could you tell they were there for me? It was like, there was this whole interview part of the article, we got past all of the transactioning questions, they were like, “So, what do you do in your free time? Any special talents?” and I was like, I started it out just like I was talking to you earlier, I said, “I don’t want to brag but … actually, don’t say that in the article, or put it in, but don’t make it sound too calculated. But I can totally slam-dunk.”

Basketball. That’s what I should have said. So yeah, that’s why I told them to come to our pick-up game. Was it too obvious that they were there for me? Was I hamming it up a little too much? I guess I didn’t have to dunk that often. The HORSE was totally unnecessary. I should have just come clean with you guys from the beginning, but I told the crew beforehand to take a bunch of photos of everyone else too.

So that’s why I was acting just as confused as you guys, like, “Why are these professional photographers here?” Which, man, since you’re telling me everyone basically knew it had to have been something to do with me, now I just feel a little disingenuous. And do you think those weird mock-confusion faces showed up on camera? Maybe I should call them back for next week. We could play twenty-one, so that way I could still dunk without it being as cheap as just owning you guys in HORSE.

Although, I’m still not really sorry about the HORSE. What about the trick bounce shot that Jeffries landed? That had to have been practiced, like you could tell he was one of those kids that spent way too much time perfecting that one random shot in the backyard. Whatever, if he spent even half that effort on the bike, it wouldn’t have been such a blowout. Did I already say that? The part about the vertical leap?

I really hate to brag, I’m just so excited, I’ve got so much going on in my life. So just let me brag a little. My fucking money, my spread, I wish I had a basketball in my hands right now. And then next time something happens for you, seriously, I’ll be the first guy you call, I give you my permission, brag away, let me in on just how good it’s going for you, like even though I’ll nod along, “Great! I’m so happy for you!” you won’t think I’m really grasping just how well things are, like you can’t stress enough, seriously, things are going so wildly well, and you don’t know how to adequately communicate what a success you’ve become, because I won’t even be on your level, our very definitions of success will be so totally far apart that, from my perspective, your success won’t even look any different from anybody else’s regular failure. I mean my success. Just, let me brag just a little. But seriously, call me when you hear about that job, or when those test results come in, I’m sure everything’s going to be great, but just let me have this moment, just, today about me, cool?

Taxi!

I was in Midtown today when this old guy pushed open the doors of a bank and yelled out, “Taxi!” at a line of cars on East 53^rd Street. It was like something out of a movie or a TV show about New York. It’s one of those things, “Taxi!” that you never see in real life, but that’s everywhere in popular culture. You want to hail a cab? Just shout out the word taxi to the skies and hopefully the livery gods will supply you with a ride.

I turned my head, he was old, I already said that, but he seemed to know what he was doing. I’m saying this as opposed to tourists or out-of-towners, because sure, maybe I could expect a group of people waiting on the sidewalk, too nervous to step out into the lane to flag down a cab, and so they’re just kind of yelling out, “Taxi?” totally unsure of themselves.

But this guy was all business. I’m not saying it worked. But it didn’t not work … what I mean is, he walked out of the bank, he yell out “Taxi!” but the line of cars he approached was idling at a red light. And even if it were green, traffic at this time of day was at a standstill. He had his pick of like four or five empty cabs, and so he just walked up to one.

What was he going for? Because I’ve always thought about this, every time I’ve watched the main character in a New York themed TV show scream out “Taxi!” I’m like, do you really think that the driver can hear you? Do you think he’s out listening for fares? No, you have to flag down a ride. There’s so much noise in the city, it’s really hard for me to believe that, regardless of how loud your voice is, you’ll have any luck in penetrating the closed doors of a car just by yelling.

Maybe he was just announcing his intentions to everybody else, a succinct way of warning off any would-be cab-goers, “I’m going to be the one taking a taxi, and so if anybody else was thinking about doing the same thing, that’s fine, but you have to wait until I’m in a cab first.”

What really bugs me is that, even though I don’t think he accomplished anything by shouting it out, I can’t shake the idea that his immediate securing of a car established in his head this idea that “Taxi!” somehow equals a ride. Listen dude, you could have shouted whatever you wanted, you could have just let out a huge, “Bagel!” and then stepped inside that unlocked backseat door, but I’m almost positive that the two events would be unrelated.

It just bothers me, this idea that you can just go through life shouting out your desires in one-word barks. It’s like when I’m waiting tables and I go up to a new group of people, and before I even have a chance to say hello, someone will just throw “Diet Coke!” at me. And what am I going to do? You want a Diet Coke? Great. I guess I’ll go and get you one.

Seriously, I’ve seen people talk to their iPhones with more respect than they do the people serving them food, or shuttling them from point A to point B. It’s like, “Siri, where can I find a good Chinese restaurant around here?” Come on, that should be the only acceptable situation in which you can skip the pleasantries, ignore the pleases and thank yous and verbs.

This guy said “Taxi!” and got into a cab, and it was so early in the morning, I looked around at the rest of the city, hoping I’d meet the confused gaze of at least one other person, we’d lock eyes and we wouldn’t have to say anything, we’d just have that really confused, “Can you believe that guy?” face on, our shoulders shrugged up almost all the way to our foreheads, and even though I said we wouldn’t have to say anything, I’d probably mouth out something, like an exaggerated, “Taxi? Did that guy really just say ‘taxi?’” to which the other person would respond with a silent, “I know, right?”

At your service

I work in a pretty busy restaurant, and there are tons of managers, everybody’s in charge of me. “Rob, come over here and do this,” or, “Rob, go over there and do that,” and whatever, that’s my job description I guess, server, servant, and I can already hear the, “If you don’t like it, get another job,” rebuttals, which is fair enough, I mean, I could always just leave. But I’ve left restaurant jobs before, it’s always such a pain in the ass showing up at a new place, trying to make a good first impression, starting over somewhere else from the bottom.

And yeah, I don’t necessarily like complaining, but every once in a while it’ll just build up, all of those little interactions at work, constantly getting micromanaged by people that you see every day, only at work, this cast of characters in my life that serve no other purpose than to direct me from point A to point B.

I have a lot of energy. At work, I don’t even necessarily try, but I move around the restaurant pretty quickly. Some kitchen manager will ask me to grab a stack of plates and move it from here to there, and I’ll do it, I get it done without breaking a sweat. And that’s doesn’t even really bother me. It’s when these little orders and commands start to pile up, when I feel that, regardless of how fast I get something done, there’s no end to little chores and constant directions.

“Rob, go get me a stack of plates. Rob, go fold this pile of linens. Rob, get me another roll of printer paper.” After a while I start to feel like, the faster and more efficient that I complete every one of these little tasks, all I’m doing is making more work for myself. Restaurant bosses hate to see their employees standing idle for even a second. And so, as soon as I open up my mouth to start small-talk with a coworker, a manager is guaranteed to show up, to interrupt me midsentence, “Rob, can you make sure that the silverware is polished?”

Yeah, I get the argument that there’s virtue in work. Sure, I have this picture in my head of me marching around the world putting my best foot forward, giving everything that I do one hundred percent, just for the sake of giving it my all, a testament to my admirable work ethic.

But on a day-to-day basis, especially on days where I’m not really feeling it, where I wish that I didn’t have to still be waiting tables at a restaurant, running around, the expediter is telling me to back up ice, and on the way to the ice machine, a customer stops me in my tracks, he lifts up his soda glass and, in between bites of food, he says simply, “More Diet Coke,” and on my way to get his refill, I’ve got another two people in the kitchen looking directly at me, “Is anybody backing up ice?” obviously you just asked me to back up ice, obviously I don’t have the ice, why are you forming it as this general question? Why don’t you just give me a second and I’ll back up ice?

Yeah, on days like that, it’ll get to me, the ceaseless busy work, the realization that, the faster I move, the more work I’ll ultimately have to do. And for what? A few dollars an hour? That’s what really bugs me about restaurant work. The house isn’t even paying me a living wage, and yet they’re acting under the expectation that I’m to work under their absolute obedience, the customers’ absolute obedience, everybody in the restaurant is my boss, but the only ones contributing to my making a living are the people who, after they’ve settled up with the house, maybe they’ll throw me a tip. Probably. Almost definitely. But still, maybe. There’s always the potential for a maybe not.

And so what can I do? “Boss, I gave table thirteen excellent service, but they didn’t leave a tip.”

“Oh well, better luck next time. Can you throw these boxes away?”

So some days, and I hate doing it, but I’ll drag my feet. It’s super passive aggressive, and I doubt anybody’s really paying attention enough to even realize that I’m upset. But that’s the only real control that I have over my day, to just take it a little easier. Because it’s not like if I work really hard they’re going to let me then chill out for a second. No, it’s right back to work, there are always a million things that need to be done, no way that I’ll be able to do everything, and so I might as well just catch my breath, walk a little slower, try to keep those negative thoughts out of my head, just doing my best to be in a better mood.

Reoccurring dreamland

Does anybody ever have reoccurring dreams? That was a stupid question, of course people have reoccurring dreams. I was just thinking of an interesting way to open this up, but that wasn’t interesting at all, that rhetorical question. I don’t get reoccurring dreams. Not in the sense of an identical dream happening on different nights.

I do experience reoccurring themes in my dreams. And from what I’ve read online, some of this stuff is pretty universal. Like the dream where your teeth fall out, apparently that’s common. And I’ve had that dream, kind of. It’s not like they just fall out, it’s usually more of, I’ll be really angry in the dream, and my jaw is just really clenched, like totally clamped down, to the point where my muscles are cracking my teeth, and slowly they start breaking and crumbling and falling out of my mouth.

A few times I’ve woken up suddenly with these images fresh in my mind, and my jaw will be tight, as if I’d been acting out the dream with my mouth. My bottom teeth might even be out to the side, or locked in a weird under bite, and it’ll take half a minute or so for everything to relax itself, all the while I’m still coming to, running my tongue along my gum line, making sure that everything is still where it was before I went to bed.

Or there are those dreams where I’ll be in a fight with someone else, I’ll be really angry, a full-blown rage. All I want to do in my dream is to pummel my opponent with my bare hands, but all of my blows land without any force. I’ll punch as hard as I can, but it’s like I’m underwater, there’s some sort of invisible resistance rendering my attacks totally useless. All the while, whoever I’m fighting is just standing there, laughing at me, not even bothering to fight back.

Speaking of underwater, what about the dreams where you’re face down in a puddle of water, but you can’t muster the strength to roll over? I’m thankful that I don’t get these too frequently, but they’re an often enough thing that, when I do find myself in dreamland being suffocated by an inch or two of standing water, something in my brain kicks in, it says, easy Rob, this is that puddle dream, you’re going to be fine. And even though I’ll realize it to be true, I still can’t help but to resist, futilely rocking my immobile body from side to side, the imminent sense of suffocation inducing a palpable terror so real that, when I finally pry myself awake, I do so with exaggerated breaths, I’m gulping for air. I think, is this like my jaw being locked, was I really not breathing in real life?

Probably one of the more frustrating reoccurring dream themes I experience is where I’ll realize that I have the ability to fly. Sometimes it’s just me that has this power, but a lot of the time it’s like everyone can fly. I look above me and there are swarms of people taking to the skies, everyone is euphoric, it’s like the whole population discovered their abilities all at the same time, and it’s this mass celebration, there’s not a single person left on the ground.

Except for me. I can fly, but only kind of. I’m trying as hard as I can, but the best I can manage is to float maybe six inches off the ground. And it’s a struggle just to maintain what little height I have. I can feel all of the muscles in my body clenched, and every minute or so, I have to rest on the ground, like I can’t keep it up, even though I know that I have it within me, if only I could just figure out what I’m doing wrong.

But then maybe I’ll be floating along, six inches over a puddle when I’ll lose it, I’ll plop down into the water and I can’t breath, so I struggle and I squirm but I can’t push myself back up, and I’m getting so frustrated, every muscle in my body is tight, even my jaw, especially my jaw, and through the muffled sounds of my choking for breath, I can hear the cracks, my teeth are splitting, cracking, they’re all falling out. By now I totally know that I’m in a dream, but part of that terror is still so real, despite the realization that I’ll wake up any minute in my bed, caked in sweat, checking to make sure that I haven’t chipped a tooth or punched the wall behind my bed.