Tom & Alissa

Alissa pointed me to the Square Peg Alliance recently, a collective of musicians doing the indie thing mostly sans-label. Their mission? “Helping bang the Square Pegs into place.” And I think that’s into your average round hole of the world. Members include songwriters like Andrew Peterson, Eric Peters, Jill Phillips and her husband Andy Gullahorn, Billy Cerveny, and Sandra McCracken, along with her husband Mr. McCracken (a.k.a. Derek Webb). All they need now are Jars of Clay, Bebo Norman, and Caedmon’s Call to have the most powerful Christian folk rock force in the universe. But oh wait, those guys are still all on major labels making mucho pesos.

The Square Peg Alliance even managed to round up its disparate members for three shows in August at Nashville’s Radio Cafe. All those guys, in the same room, at the same time…talk about rocking your folky face off! The best part is they recorded it for our free enjoyment, which leads me to this…

I lost count of my bootleg concert collection somewhere after the three-hundred mark, but most of those recordings are from recent awesome bands like Iron & Wine, Sufjan Stevens, and Over the Rhine–bands I fell in love with primarily since I moved to New York. Severly missing are all the groups I’ve grown up with that are still performing their butts off–most of whom, oddly enough, are in the Square Peg Alliance. So when I saw on their website they’d recorded their recent shows and put them online for free I rushed over to grab them.

There used to be an FTP server called Ragamuffin for Christian bootleg concerts (allow me to clarify that these recordings are first given the ok by the artists before being made available to the public or, more often than not, the artists have a recording policy for what can and cannot be done in regards to live fan recordings, so this is legal if the artist allows for it, which this group of artists does–you may now let go of your concern).

Anyway, the concerts on Ragamuffin generally took forever to download and were of poor quality (MP3) compared to todays nearly lossless standards (FLAC). Most of these newer sites use a technology known as BitTorrent, which you can read about here (it’s already been explained better, so why bother). Well, the site the Square Peg Alliance uses for their concerts is brand spanking new (it started in July) and utilizes this new technology for high quality downloads, and also includes individual concerts by many of the same artists that comprise the Alliance. Allow me to unveil…IndieRiver.Net. You may now ooo and ahh.

We’ve both had a lot of projects brewing and heaped upon us - lots of ideas and casting around for more. We’ve been studying and learning a lot. Tom’s been busy (but he’s better at detailing it all than I am) - running around town for meetings and work stuff and even catered again this week, which was kind of weird, but cool. He brought home calla lilies!

My first big print magazine feature is due this weekend, and because of circumstances, I’ve been scrambling to catch up. I’m pretty happy with the result - I’ll let you know when and where it appears when the time draws nearer. I have a big component to code into the IAM site by the beginning of next month so it can be tested in time for launch on November 15. I started at Girls’ Guide to City Life yesterday, and there’s been a bunch of editing work at Relevant. And I have a few article ideas brewing in my noggin that want to get out, plus an exciting top-secret project on which I can (thankfully) can spend as much time as necessary.

And oh, right, I have a day job, and after a sleepy summer the work has suddenly picked up again - prototyping and proofreading and even some Javascript, which is a departure from my normal work. I’ve managed to put out a few fires and avoid a few more, and that makes me happy. I wasn’t feeling well on Tuesday morning, so in order to avoid the subways I stayed home and worked - and it was amazing how productive I was without these darn fluorescent lights. I like working from home - especially being able to eat lunch with my husband.

But being busy is better than being idle, and I can feel some kind of momentum building. It’s good.

• Geek alert - the Star Trek collection that’s being auctioned at Christie’s next week is currently being displayed in the Rockefeller concourse. I have walked past it and it’s pretty impressive, even to someone with zero Trekkie knowledge and zero desire to possess said knowledge. (Take the B/D/F/V to Rockefeller Center and start walkin’.)

• I saw that Celebrity Jeopardy is at Radio City Music Hall in a couple of weeks as I was crossing 6th Ave today. Alex Trebek is hosting, of course. I would have bought tickets on the spot if it said “Will Ferrell hosting” - and not because I harbor any love for Will Ferrell, but because of this.

• On a more refined ::ahem:: note, saltwater.net houses some of the most beautiful clothing I’ve seen in a long time. Too bad they’re in the UK.

If you’ve been around anytime in the last four months, you’ve probably heard me raving about Rob Long’s KCRW radio show/podcast “Martini Shot.” If I were a web editor for their website, I’d put it like this: every week witty writer with great delivery skewers the movie business in five minute let the laughs roll monologue. They’re great, they really are, and this episode from June is still probably my favorite. His delivery is so good you have to hear it for the full effect…

[Listen] | [Listen] | [Listen]

Or if you’re too technologically impaired for that you can read it now, but you won’t laugh as much, so I don’t recommend it. Even I, loving this piece as much as I do, wouldn’t get nearly the kick out of it that I do if I didn’t have Rob’s delivery playing in my head, so do yourself a favor and listen to it instead. Except for you Dad, this is for you…

Salute the Monkey

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot.

A few days ago, I was talking to a writer friend of mine. He had a meeting scheduled the next day with a senior executive at one of the networks.

“I don’t even know why I’m going,” he told me. “Everybody knows that –” and here he mentioned the name of the executive — “is getting fired next week. I mean, it’s a total waste of my time. I go to the meeting, I pitch my idea, the exec buys it in the room, the exec gets fired that afternoon, idea dead. You know what I should do? I should go to the meeting, tell” — and here he mentioned the name of the executive again, which I am not going to mention because I’m not really sure yet if that particular executive knows that that particular executive’s contract isn’t being renewed — I mean, things like this happen all the time in Hollywood — the only person unaware of the total lack of upper management support for that person’s continued employment is usually that person. I once heard of a guy who was summoned to his studio boss’ office for what he thought was a pat on the back and a bonus check, only to be terminated. And when he got back to his office, his stuff was all packed up — turns out his assistant had been discretely boxing his belongings for the past two weeks, leaving out just enough items to create a kind of comforting Potemkin-village of an office.

But I’ve lost the thread of this. Where was I? Oh, right: my friend wanted to go to the meeting and tell the executive what everybody knew, and say, “Hey, no hard feelings, but why don’t we just sit here and drink our Diet Cokes and talk about private school tuition, and I’ll just save my pitch for your successor, who we’re all pretty sure is–” and here my friend mentioned the name of the person that everybody knows is going to replace the person that everybody knows is going to get fired, which by the way I’m not going to do, because I’m not really sure that is the person, yet, and I don’t want that person to think that some kind of big offer of big money is surely on its way and do something silly like buy a house north of Montana with one of those jumbo 40-year interest-only crippling balloon-payment adjustable interest-rate mortgages because you know, hey, I’m the new VP of network comedy development! I’m unstoppable! I will succeed at this job! Despite the fact that no one has ever succeeded at this job! Ever! So by the time that balloon payment comes due I’ll be running the damn network myself! Not teaching at the Learning Annex! Where do I sign the escrow papers?!

See, I won’t do that to that person. Because it would be, at best, premature, and at worst, cruel. And I, as you know, love people.

But my writer friend does not love people. And he doesn’t see why he needs to go through the weird Kabuki of taking a meeting he knows will be useless. Interesting existential question, really. Because when you get right down to it, all meetings are useless — all executives are doomed — and any pitch can get sucked into that sticky, sweet-smelling development dumpster.

But I was curious about his predicament, so I called a wise, older agent friend of mine. I put the dilemma to him. He sighed the sigh of a very rich — very, very rich — man.

“You know what I’d tell him? He asked, richly.

“What?”

“I’d tell him to shut up and pitch,” he said, wealthily.

“Really? Even to an exec on the way out?”

“Yeah. Look, you go in there, and you salute the uniform, okay? What do you care who’s wearing it? They put a monkey in the uniform, you salute the monkey.” And then he hung up…with great affluence.

I was going to call my friend with this advice, but then another friend called me to say that that friend didn’t know it yet, but wasn’t going to get his studio contract renewed. So the exec who was about to be fired was only having the meeting with the writer out of courtesy. I mean, talk about Kabuki.

I didn’t tell me friend what I heard. Because I, you know, love people.

My first post on our new blog together and it shall be a recipe (courtesy of B.J. at RazzleDazzleRecipes.com).

The pork chops were actually leftover from an earlier meal Alissa had cooked on Saturday, so I only fixed the glaze to spruce them up, but how amazing it was! And I definitely recommend doubling or even tripling the apple slice portion of the recipe. I made those proportions to cover our two pork chops and it was just the right amount to coat everything generously. They’re so good you’ll want that extra helping to go around. Enjoy!

Maple Glazed Pork Chops

6 bone-in pork loin chops, about 1-inch thick
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons maple syrup

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Season pork chops with salt and pepper. In a large skillet heat 1 tablespoon butter over medium heat until hot but not browned. Brown pork chops on each side. Add maple syrup and coat lightly. Transfer meat to baking dish. Bake until tender, about 20 to 25 minutes.

Bourbon Buttered Apple Slices:

1/2 cup butter
2 large golden delicious apples, peeled, sliced 1/4-inch thick
3 tablespoons chopped shallots
3 tablespoons bourbon or apple cider
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1/2 cup apple cider
1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage or 1 teaspoon dried sage
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

Heat 1/4 cup of the butter in large skillet. Add apples and shallots and cook over medium heat until apples are tender, about 8 to 10 minutes. Add Bourbon and cook 2 minutes. Add maple syrup; cook 1 minute. Add cider and cook over medium-high heat until most of liquid has evaporated. Reduce heat and stir in remaining butter, 1 tablespoon at a time. Stir in sage, nutmeg and cloves. Serve over pork chops.

We did many things this weekend.

Friday night was dinner-and-a-movie, though I was too sleepy to really finish the movie. I made pork chops and smoked salmon risotto and we had olive oil and rosemary ciabatta from the market downstairs. We watched the first half of Cyrano de Bergerac.

So Saturday, we went to brunch at Moutarde, which was French and yummy. We finished watching Cyrano, then took a nap before heading out to Kevin & Laura’s for a “Septokberfest” with many friends from church. We are starting to feel like our coolness factor has actually been increased by getting married. (Not that we weren’t, um, cool to begin with. Maybe?)

After church on Sunday, we went to the Carters’ for a celebration of their baby daughter Maggie’s baptism. It’s amazing how many people you can fit into a Manhattan apartment if they want to be there. Most people would cringe at inviting that many people over just for lunch, but they gamely extended an open invitation to the whole church, most of whom came. Hurrah!

The apartment was a wreck by the time we got home last night, so we set at cleaning it up. And then Tom made some sublime bourbon-and-apple glaze to put over the remaining pork chops, and we started watching Tokyo Story but quit because Tom was tired. We cleaned up and Tom fell asleep as I read to him from the book of Daniel.

Tonight he has to work, his first catering job in a very long time, and so it’s the first real evening we’ve spent apart since we got married. I’ll be coding maniacally trying to get a dent put into the IAM conference registration, and probably drinking cappuccinos at a decent pace.

I grew up with Sheryl; we were never close, but we were usually in the same group of people, through Sunday School, VBS, youth group, and all that.

But Sheryl and Dad were buddies. Dad taught her guitar for a while. For such a big teddy bear, he was “tough”. “No excuses! I want you practicing!”

The last time I saw Sheryl was in the line for the viewing before Dad’s funeral, about three and a half weeks ago. She was weeping and gave me a huge hug. I told her I figured Dad was probably up there strumming the guitar and drinking coffee with Greg Moroz, and she laughed through her tears. I’ve heard how much she was affected by Dad’s death and how much she missed him these last few weeks.

Sheryl spent her whole life battling health problems, living in a wheelchair, trying to see God’s purpose in it all. This morning, after a short fight in the ICU, she passed away.

Charity wrote this comment on my blog earlier this week about Dad:

In my mind’s eye I can see him standing at the door of Heaven as an Official Greeter. And, time being what it is (weird), in a moment, myself, my spouse and relatives and his friends and relatives will be in front of him. I can almost see him laughing at us, pointing and saying “Ha!! I beat you here!”

I can almost palpably see him now, running to the gate to meet Sheryl - who’s running toward him. (He’s probably a little surprised to see her so soon.) She’ll tell him about the beautiful funeral we put together for him and how many people were there and how many people miss him and that his body got buried in a national cemetery and he’s saying, “Cool!” in that Dad way.

He’s giving her a big bear hug, and bringing her over to introduce her to his friend Jesus. And after introducing her to a bunch of others, they’re walking over to the porch of his new mansion, where they’re strumming the new guitars which never really go out of tune. And neither of them have to practice anymore. They can just play.

See you soon, guys.

So, as many people know, Sufjan Stevens is releasing a Christmas boxed set this year. I have many of these already as he released the first three for free on the internet last year.

But this made me laugh - there’s a track on the last volume called Get Behind Me, Santa!

We are in possession of the Silver Spoon Cookbook, a wedding gift from the fabulous Brandon & Emily. And I’m poking through it now so that I can call in an order to my wonderful husband for groceries so I can make him a scrumptious dinner tonight.

And I’m drooooling.

This cookbook was only recently translated from Italian into English and claims to be “the last word” in Italian cooking. None of this crazy Americanized Italian, folks - this is the real thing. It’s also approximately the size, shape, and weight of a cinder block.

YUM.

We have been watching lots ‘n lots o’ movies since we got married.

Sadly, the first movie we watched together was Invincible, with Mark Wahlberg. Also sadly, it was a hideous failure of a movie. Happily, however, we saw it at a drive-in theater in Wellfleet, Cape Cod, a new experience for both of us and great fun (not to mention the novelty of driving a car, on loan from the wonderful Charity (and I won’t post her last name in case she isn’t into last names appearing on the internet, though now that I think about it, there wouldn’t be much to be gained by the knowledge of this particular very common last name). Anyhow. In lieu of reviewing them all, I will simply list them with mini-comments:

• Invincible
see above illuminating text
• Back to the Future 1
Classic, and much funnier than I expected.
• Back to the Future 2
Same as before but with the added benefit of a really dark twist.
• Back to the Future 3
Great Scott!
• Forrest Gump
So funny *and* heartwarming! I think this is the first really long movie that I didn’t want to end.
• Boogie Nights
It’s raunchy and scarring, but brilliant.
• 3 Needles
Went to an advanced screening on Tuesday night, and won’t write more in case I cover it in an article.

I say all this because we have another screening tonight, this time for Volver, and it looks good. I’m enjoying this film journalist stuff. I think I may have to make a serious go at it.

If I forgot a film, my other half will undoubtedly fix it soon.

Flickr minicards. Madly cool and good prices. If you’re a Flickr pro user, you can get a sample pack of 10 for free (but hurry, it’s for a limited number of cards).

Especially good if you’re a pro photographer or freelancer, I think.

So we’ve been married for two weeks and a day today. And we like it.

Just a quick note to say that my dad’s obituary is on the web here, and there’s a guestbook here (and it’s worth reading).

Thank you so much to everyone who has sent cards and prayers for my family and I during our time of grieving. We are so grateful for you.

Because they pull down the obits after a year, I’m going to copy-and-paste the text under the cut to save.
(more…)

Pssst. If you buy Paste Magazine’s October 2006 issue and flip to the film reviews, you’ll find a review of A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, written by yours truly.

Also, run on out and buy your copy of Relevant Nation. Several profiles by moi, including singer/songwriter Derek Webb and my dear friend Angela.

Been taking it relatively easy around home, trying to recover from a couple of hectic weeks. It’s nice to just be the two of us for a while!

We had lunch with the excellent Todd at the excellent Dos Caminos in Soho after church on Sunday. I have not been a guacamole fan to date, but this has all changed. Savory, a little salty, nice and creamy but with good-sized chunks of veggies in it, all served with some great fresh tortilla chips in a stone bowl. Vive la guacamole! (Please ignore my preposterous language problems.) I’m still salivating.

In my neverending quest for the coolest feedreader, I stumbled upon Newshutch today. It’s great. I promptly passed it on to Ken, with whom I seem to have an unofficial who-can-find-cool-stuff-first competition going on (mutually beneficial to both us, our families, and our blog audiences). Anyhow, though he’d found it a few weeks ago, I still am all geeked out over it and think it’s great. Elegant and useful.

Because of all the recent activity surrounding my father’s funeral and the subsequent wedding, I neglected to mention that we caught the first official show of Chris Thile and the How to Grow a Band at the Bowery Ballroom on Tuesday night, August 29. It was stunning and awesome and I don’t want to spoil it all but you simply must get the album. They are five highly talented musicians who just rock.

Speaking of Ken, he set up a Flickr group for our wedding photos, so if you’ve got some (or you’re just plain curious), go. Because of the two-day postponement of the wedding, we had no professional photographer and the ceremony took place in my mom’s backyard, but many people turned out with cameras and we’ve still got a lot more to sift through.

It’s good to be back. :)

So, in case you were wondering, we’re home in Brooklyn now. Much more coming soon!

It’s been a week of tears and sadness and grief, but it’s been a week of an incredible outpouring of love on my family and me.

And tomorrow, we marry. There will be four in this little family again.

I’m too tired and disgusted to go into all the details, but if you’re ever considering using Elegant Touch catering in the Albany, NY area, please do yourself a favor and contact me first so I can explain the experience I had with them. At the least, I can give you some ideas for how to protect yourself in case of unforeseen circumstances.

And that’s all I really want to say about that.