The End of the Thanksgiving

I wanted to take a minute to let you each know that Irene and I both had a great time over Thanksgiving. I know that occasionally we took a bit longer to get ready than might have been strictly desirable, but otherwise I'm hoping we did our part too.

So, on Sunday, we went to Trinity Church on the South Side (400 W. 95th Street). Deep in the South Side. The church is UCC, which is the denomination Irene belongs to. Not that that alone would have made the 100+ street trip worthwhile. The church is also the home of a certain Democratic Presidential candidate. The increased publicity caused by that fact put some pressure on the church and its Pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. Nothing's sacred.

The service was unlike any other I've been to--starting with the fact that it was two and a half hours along. Ouch.

Given that it started at 11am and it took an hour to get back from on the El, by the time we made it to Pizzeria Uno's, there wasn't any wait at all. Well, that's not exactly true. You have to wait an hour for the pizza to cook... Good thing we let that bird fly when we did.

The airport was a nightmare. There was no getting on an earlier flight. There was only getting on our regular flight, desperately attempting to not flip out and attack some obnoxious Starbucks' barista. Holiday travel. Thank the Lord the pizza was worth it.

The Holiday Season

I was going to post some pictures of my new place, of which I'm quite proud, but I've temporarily misplaced the cable that connects my camera to my computer. A lot of work has gone into putting 277 Highland Ave., #2 into shape. Work by not only myself, Irene and my roommate Steve, but also my friend Kevin (who put up our dartboard--he's just a handy guy). And did I mention Irene? She not only did she secure several pieces of our furniture, including our coffee table and my bedroom desk, but she also went through the trouble of painting several pieces of it. A very nice "beer barrel brown."


I'll have pictures up soon. In the meantime, lacking my camera cable I got to thinking about things I need, and what others might need. You know, for Christmas. Dad put the kibosh on the Beer of the Month club so the field is wide open. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comment section (I might clue Amy in to this little project, too, so she can chime in).

As for me, both you and Irene have done a good job supplying me with dishes. The next logical steps are pots and glasses. After getting those pictures from Uncle George, though, I realized that I don't think I've ever seen the entirety of your wedding pictures. I'd like to. Maybe you two could make an album of copies of them for me? How's that for a fun little project?

Oh, and I was also looking over things to do in Chicago, and it looks like the Museum of Contemporary Art has some good stuff going on (again). And we still need to get some proper deep dish pizza. Irene and I'll need to restock carbs after running the Naperville Turkey Trot.

Gobble, gobble.

Latest Contretemps

Since it's come up, I thought I'd bring your attention to the latest Facebook victim: Kevin Colvin. The word on the street is that he told his employers at the Anglo Irish Bank he needed to take a Friday off for "family reasons," but then took off to Worcester, Massachusetts for a Halloween party. When his boss found pictures of him at the party on Facebook, well, things went South quickly.

Makes you wonder why anyone has a Facebook profile these days.

The Book of Love

Irene and I have been catching lots of shows lately. The latest was at the Toad, which coincidentally, is attached to a bar named Christopher's. We had the great luck to see Rose Polenzani, a very talented Americana/Indie/Folk musician singing with another very talented young female musician, Rose Cousins. I found a video of them doing a song called "Book of Love," by the Magnetic Fields. Irene and I are going to see them on Valentine's Day.

My favorite lines are:

"The book of love is long and boring
And written very long ago
It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes
And things we're all too young to know"

Best of all, Irene managed to convince them to play at North Prospect this Sunday.

Enjoy.

The Four Corners of Internet Exchange

I also wanted to riff off of a comment that Irene made earlier regarding the internet, and the comments that people make thereon (See what I did there? Who worries about transitions in blogging except the children of English Professors?). Prepare yourself.

One great personal internet disappointment has been the way in which political dialogue has evolved (or devolved, according to your p.o.v.) on this new platform. The potential always seemed fantastic. If the republic requires a marketplace of ideas and a free exchange of thought, it is difficult to imagine a better medium: Communication is immediate and it spreads to the very ends of the earth itself.

Unfortunately, it takes very little examination to determine that what is most striking about internet political dialogue is anonymity, and what's most prized isn't profundity--it's vitriol.

That said, the internet does do several things exceptionally well. For example, I'm sure Dan Rather will tell you that it provides an instant army of fact checkers who can focus national media attention on an incorrect or misleading story. It's also proved to be a powerful means of raising funds and disseminating information.

But it is my hunch than in the more important arena of political debate, it acts as little more than an echo chamber. It is easy enough to find people who share your views and the arguments that support whatever those views may be. A constant system of support creates small cause for self-reflection, and so smaller cause for questioning. Ironically, instead of broadening an individual's exposure to widely disparate beliefs it has allows for a re-entrenchment of beliefs previously held, and instead of novel attempts to engage with opposing views we have legions of internet users parroting both the arguments and attempted humor of the same political internet sites. Worst of all, all of these factors come together to create a seemingly endless reservoir of indignation and repulsion. To be emotionally engaged in any meaningful sense requires committing oneself to exhaustion.


And I would leave it there, if it weren't for an experience recounted to me by one Ms. A.I. Jenkins. In a confidential communique, she informed me that having encountered the standard dross regarding Hillary Clinton, instead of posting openly in the forum chastising the offending party (somewhat offending, anyway. Didn't you hear? A.I.'s all for Obama.) she emailed him confidentially and a relatively productive discussion ensued. It's the first ever online, I'm told.

So, what to make of it? Perhaps earnestness is all that's ever been required, and online or offline it's just that it's always been in short supply. Perhaps our group mentality is so strong that it doesn't actually require groups in any physically recognizable sense. Maybe group mentality only requires people thousands of miles away who think, like we do, that Hillary is two-faced, Obama is naive, and Edwards is a closet radical. Perhaps I just expected too much.

Anyway, these are the things I think about. Thanks for indulging me.

CYHSY

Last nite Irene and I went to see a band called "Clap Your Hands Say Yeah" ("Clap Your Hands") at the Middle East in Cambridge. Clap Your Hand's claim to fame is that they started out almost entirely as an internet phenomenon. No major record label, no shows outside New York, no nothing, really. But they put their eponymous album online and word spread. Before they knew it they were getting hundreds of thousands of orders.

They recently put out another album, "Some Loud Thunder." Following the breakthrough success of their initial album, their second feels a bit like an attempt to establish themselves as artists, and conversely to establish that they aren't one of modern musics many one time wonders. In any event, Irene and I saw them touring in support of "Some Loud Thunder." They don't tour often and this was their first stop, so it was particularly good to see them.

They played a good number of songs from the first album (the one most people are familiar with) and I was struck by the variations from the recorded tracks. I suppose when you become intimately familiar with the recording of a song it's easy to view it as Definitive (with a purposefully capital D). Like a painting. An artist can talk about what they meant, and what they were feeling, but in the end it stands bare for all the world to see. You can't expect an artist to repaint a piece over and over again.

But maybe live shows are more like theater. The Director and Producer can work together to ensure multiple versions of their work. Of course, Directors and Producers rely on Players (that shifty bunch) whose allegiance is often more to their own glory then anything else.

Alone among them, a small band of four or five musicians can authoritatively recreate and reinterpret their work night after night after night. Once the LP is cut the issue is set, to a certain extent, but unlike an author who must set their work free out into the world and afterwards can only harp after it, the musician can reproduce a song in its entirety and gently point out to us what we may have misinterpreted, and what time and circumstance may have wrongly exaggerated. It's a beautiful gift. Check out the recorded version:

Flickr

How could I forget about Flickr? Flickr is where all the cool kids post their photos.
If you want to see the photos of Irene and I in the U.K. again, there you go.

Open Thread

"Open Thread" is another blogging term. Basically, the blogger will pose a question and the commentators will try to answer it, and pose questions to each other and the author. On the more heated political topics this gives people a chance to vent and fool around. On our more docile weblog it gives us a good chance to up the interactivity.

So what do you think of the idea of this blog? Useful? Fun? Anything you'd like to hear more of? Less? Let me know.

North Prospect Church

North Prospect is the church that Irene is currently doing what amounts to a work-study program at. She worked there several years ago, so this is her second time. It is an "open and affirming" UCC Congregation. You may have seen the UCC adverts around town: "Don't put a period where God has put a comma." Most interestingly (for at least one of you) North Prospect puts all of its sermons online--including those of the lovely Miss Anna Irene Jenkins. They also have a very involved "Elderspirit" program, which is geared towards there senior congregants, of which there are many. In fact, part of Irene's work at the church is to increase attendance, particularly among the young.

She's already got an easy one--I've gone with her every week for more than a month. When's the last time that happened?

Playoffs!

Not those playoffs. My recreational, 7 v. 7, coed soccer team's playoffs! Our team number is 1, and our team name was originally Kevin & Co. after our nominal coach, but we were later switched to Het Legioen by a Dutch teammate when Kevin objected. This same group of guys and gals have been playing together for almost three years.

True, we ended this particular season an underwhelming 1-4-1, but our last two games were the tie and the win, so we're on an upswing! We finished 2nd to last so we're playing the second best team. We play at 7pm tomorrow. If we lose they may boot us out of the A-League. Wish us luck.

I'm also excited about the Boston Celtic Music Festival, which is just around the corner. If you go to the events myspace page, most of the performers are listed as friends. If you click on their profiles you can hear a bit of what they sound like.

Also on myspace, though not particularly Celtic, is one of Irene's friends from Divinity School: Noe Venable. Go ahead and listen to "Prayer for Beauty" and try not to be impressed. I dare you.

One More Resource

Sorry for laying one on you last post. Sometimes the ideas percolate too long and then explode when they see the light of day. As my Judge used to say when someone would make a dubious legal argument, "Well, at least he's thinking big thoughts about the world!"

Another internet resource I've found valuable is yelp.com. Yelp is basically a user review site. What that means is that it allows people with an account to write reviews of restaurtants, bars, theaters, and basically anything else, and then share them on the site. As more and more people review a place it becomes a more accurate barometer of what it's actually like. For example, I recently wrote a review of my local pub, Magoun's (I'm Christopher B).

It's a nice little place. Irene and I took her parents there the last time they came down. Next time you come up we can check it out!