Curating Local Music Talent in Ann Arbor

Last night the Ark in Ann Arbor http://theark.org hosted the final performance of the Student Songwriters Showcase Series and announced the winner. The event was held in-the-round at the University of Michigan Museum of Art http://www.umma.umich.edu/.

In my search for wire cutters to break through the tall fence around the Ann Arbor cool people crowd, I went to this event. I didn't get through the fence, but I got a look at who is inside. Emily Ross is the show director at the Ark and she MC'd the evening's performances. You might call her one of the gatekeepers on the fence around the cool people. Or as I like to call them, Curators.

Through Emily's good judgement and curation a young singer songwriter was ushered through the gate and Handel Winkler is now one of the cool people. She won the competition. It has been going on for weeks as a series of showcases and culminated last night as the winner was announced. I caught the moment on video for you: [the camera work doesn't do justice to the importance of the moment, but you get the idea]
[Video]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40148169@N03/4465795581/
And he winner is...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40148169@N03/4465797067/
So Handel did an encore:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40148169@N03/4466596522/

Handel performed last and up until then, my money was on Katie and Sarah:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40148169@N03/4466566332/

Handel gets an opening performance slot at one the Ark shows as her prize for winning the contest. Watch for that announcement on the Ark on-line calendar:

http://theark.org/calendar.html
and follow the Ark on Twitter

http://twitter.com/annarborark

Here's an art shot of Katie Van Dusen:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40148169@N03/4466378471/

And a close-up clip of Katie playing violin:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40148169@N03/4467150670/

Park This

I thought it was just me but apparently everyone who lives in a city is obsessed with parking. I had the parking nightmare of my life a week ago and this is how it went: Last Friday night on a lark I took off for Madison Wisconsin to see why Men's Health called it America's second best city for men [Seattle is #1]. I got as far as Chicago by midnight and it was raining pretty hard so I decided to stop at a hostel and get a night's sleep and then go on Saturday to explore the college town with the cheese flavor and the good rep.

I punched up "hostel" on my Garmin navigator and followed the nice lady's voice to the corner of Congress and Wabash in the middle of downtown Chicago. HI CHiCAGO the hostel in the windy city. I parked in an empty lot behind the building and went in to register. I got my room key and just went up to the dorm and fell asleep planning to get up before 5:00 am to move my car before the parking lot attendant got there in the morning. I've done this lots of times before in Miami and Los Angeles [HI Santa Monica] and other places where I've stayed at hostels. It's sort of a dirty little secret that if you exit a parking structure before it opens in the morning the gates are up and you can just leave without paying. But this was not a parking structure. It was an open lot. And this was Chicago. I should have read the signs.

I came out at 4:45 in the morning to find an empty space where my car had been and an empty feeling where my stomach was. I had been towed. A long day stretched before me during which I would take cabs back and forth from the impound lot to the hostel, visit several banks and finally end up at a St. Patty's day party at a bar called the Franklin Tap. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

After I recovered from the initial shock of being robbed of everything [I left my luggage and computer in the car] I went back to the hostel desk and explained the situation to the clerk at the desk. They are always very helpful to the traveler and this was no exception. The girl called the towing service, verified that they had my car, then called a cab and I was on my way to the impound lot. No problem. It's only money, and travel is costly.

All-City Towing is in a scary part of Wicker Park and had I not just talked with the lady on the phone I would have thought no one was there, but there was a light on in the construction-office trailer that adjoined the chain link fence around the impound yard and so I tipped the cabby and watched him disappear down the street. My last link with safety. Then I made my way to the impound window, and sure enough, "Connie" was there.

You look up to the window and tip-toe up to hand your ID to the woman behind the bullet proof glass at this place, so that's what I did. I gave her my driver's license and an American Express credit card. Ooops!They only take VISA or MASTER/CARD. I had neither and only $85 cash. So I asked Connie what I could do. My card is a "Blue Cash' credit card but that means Blue Cash BACK when you make purchases with the card -- not Green cash when you need it. I had no PIN for my card and no other cards in my wallet, [a mistake when you visit Chicago]. But somehow I survived. So I'll know better next time

Connie directed me to an ATM about half a mile away which would do me no good so I asked her to call me a cab back to the hostel. On a long shot I asked her if I could get my laptop out of the trunk o fmy car and she actually said I could. [The one "yes" in a vast ocean of "No" in which I would soon be swimming.] So Connie called me a cab and I went back to the hostel. Another $10 ride.

I got back there and decided to stay for the free juice and cereal breakfast [why not] so I set up my laptop and looked for the free WiFi internet connection. Ooops! I should have asked at the desk. The wireless network at the top of the list said HI Chicago so I went there and found a pay site offering 3 hours for $3.95 so I signed up. The certificate had expired but what the heck, maybe it would be alright. Just this one time. What could go wrong? Then my computer started acting funny. Nothing would work. No access to the internet. And my credit card info was now in the hands of some no-name generic internet provider pay site. Not too smart, but I was far from home and had not even had my first cup of coffee after finding my car missing so give me a break.

I finished my bran flakes and OJ, put my laptop under my raincoat and went out into the cold Chicago morning to seek my fortune. It was Saturday and banks would be open. No problem getting $170 cash with AMEX on my side. Right? Nope.

After 3 attempts to do the legitimate thing [visit the lobby of a bank and discuss my problem with a banker] I had opened a new checking account, collected a variety of suckers and candy kisses and other treats that banks are giving out now [it's a bank thing if you haven't been recently] and I heard the words "We cant..." said in so many verbose and polite ways it was making me sick.

Four hours and three bank visits later and still no $170. I actually became a customer of one of the banks. I opened a new checking account and tried to fund it with a cash advance from my AMEX card. No dice. Cash or check only on the first deposit. Twenty five dollar minimum. Now they had $25 of my fast disappearing dollars and I had another bank account that did me no good what-so-ever, so I finally eventually started cruising bars. Hey, on St. Patrick's week with a parade marching down the street, and everyone wearing green beads like Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras, you would too.

But before that there came a brief interlude when I took refuge in the Chicago Public Library.

Libraries offer free internet service to anyone. I plugged in my laptop and up came their WiFi. Success! I went on Twitter to connect with some friendly people. I got into a pretty good tweet rally with @Jane_bot, whom I haven't really engaged online before(she never uses the @sign) but you could tell we were responding to one another and @JimmyTourettes even documented the fact with this inimitable tweet: http://bit.ly/bj874R So that was a fun recess, but I had to eventually face my problem.

The point is: I was feeling demoralized and far from home on a cold rainy Saturday but twitter gave me temporary shelter from the storm. As I look back, that is the part I remember most. [other than the girl at Starbucks] I sat in the Chicago Public Library for an hour or so just blindly tweeting back and forth with @jane_bot neither of us replying specifically @ one another, but shooting zingers and hitting bulls eyes, and I laughed my head off a couple of times. It brought me the courage to deal with my problem and the inspiration to get recklessly creative. I had to get my car back and it took me most of the day but finally I did it. In the end, it was simple.

It occurred to me that bar owners can make things happen, so I talked to a door-man and he said the girls inside were friendly so I went inside and, long story short, I got my car back. I consider myself lucky to have survived the holiday. So I'm reminiscing about it today in the comfort and warmth of my Ann Arbor apartment.

So now things are back to normal. I'm looking for a girlfriend and she's looking for me. What are you looking at? Quit looking at my butt.

Peeping Tom Technology

Peeping Tom Technology

What if someone put software in your computer that could turn on your webcam and watch you. Would you feel violated?

Should that person be punished? What if they did it for "security" reasons? Would that excuse them? What if they recorded and distributed what they saw?

What if they observed you in a setting where you had a reasonable expectation of privacy, like your own home. What if they positioned the software in your computer secretly under the guise of of an automatic update to a utility program like Real Player or Adobe Air? What if you caught them doing all this?

What would you do?

Now supposing they recorded you in a compromising position and taunted you about it later to let you know what they had seen?

What's the right thing to do to people like this?

The Nine Muses

I have made quite a point in my writing about the search for love being a quest to find a muse. I formed this opinion without knowing much about the original nine muses, so it seems only proper that I should learn something about them. I have recently done this (don’t ask me why I waited so long).

The muses were goddesses in Greek mythology who ruled over the arts and sciences. Each gave inspiration to poets and philosophers who studied her subject. More important than the names of the muses are the categories of arts and science over which they ruled. The division of knowledge into nine areas reflects the ancient Greek way of thinking and valuing certain fields. Three of the nine areas are poetry. The Greeks divided poetry into epic, love and sacred poetry. Each had a muse. There was a muse of tragedy, comedy, dance and music. So far, these are all arts -- areas of study in which emotions are equally as important as thoughts or ideas. The remaining muses gave inspiration in the two sciences of history and astronomy.

These nine fields represented knowledge as the Greeks conceived it. There never was a muse of weightlifting or tennis, twittering or blogging, cooking or road trips. This could be why I am having such a time finding a muse of my own. Greeks had to focus their endeavors on one of the acknowledged arts or sciences to win favor with the muses. Why, then, would I expect a release from this requirement in my own search? That’s just the way I am, I guess. And for this reason, my search has failed. Rather than looking for a woman who inspires me to write, lately I have been chasing one who inspires me to wander. All muses would frown on this.

The nine muses were goddesses born of Zeus, the lord of all Greek gods. Their mother was the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne. Muses were gifted with memory because in their time poets and philosophers had no books in which to record their work. They had to rely on memory and this is where muses came to their aid.

The fact that my memory is quite short gives an indication that my search for a muse is at least an appropriate strategy for correcting one of my flaws. My memory could use a lot of help. I seem to forget from infatuation to infatuation that I’ve been here, done this, and made these mistakes before. Only the on-line ID changes. The pattern is the same. I try to make muses out of everyone I meet. Mostly I meet women on line so I have become sort of a world-wide muse abuser.

Anyway, as they say in the recovery programs, it’s a bad habit until you know you have it. After that if you continue to do it, it becomes a character flaw. Awareness brings a higher responsibility and I am called upon now to stop this muse mongering of mine. No more confusing women with goddesses. It just makes the women nervous. I can only guess what the goddesses would think of it. Not much, I suspect. So I’m working on my memory. The thing that muses have in common is good memories. They get this from their mom. I have learned one thing from my travails with women who move me to obsession. When you are obsessed with someone, the best thing to do is become more like the thing for which you admire them. The quality that you find alluring is a quality that you probably lack. And by “you” of, course, I mean me.

These women I pursue represent the missing part of me. I pursue them instead of working on my own deficiencies. That is the crux of the problem. If I could become more pure of heart, more innocent and sincere myself, I wouldn’t find it necessary to move toward someone who has those qualities. And when I gaze at the physical grace of one of my Yoga teachers, who makes Yoga seem like one of the arts, I am looking at my own unrealized potential to become more poised and flexible myself.

In sum, I have found that the real cure for my obsession is to work on my own character. Becoming more well rounded is a goal that can keep you busy for life. In the process, you make yourself more appealing. Becoming better qualified to be the object of someone else’s obsession is better than blindly chasing your own. It will help you stop worshiping shadows on the cave of your elusive dream. That's how I'm spending my time today answering, “What are you doing?”

First Movie Role

The Bag

I garbage picked it
from a student’s move-out heap
it’s what they wanted

so they put me in
then I made up a story
on how I got it

and they saw through it
so they didn’t like me much
but I was still in

and you can see me
in the Farmer’s Market scene
when it comes to town

“Trivial Pursuits”
my first role in a movie
carrying “The Bag”

Hollywood Basics

Labor Day Lesson

This is what I've learned:
Everyone in Hollywood
thinks they’re really smart...

much smarter than you.
They think they can drop their shorts
and you’ll pick them up.

It doesn’t occur
to people who think they’re smart
that you could fool them.

So, to the Beemer
with vanity plate SCHMOOZER:
Pick up your own shorts.

In front of the gym
where the locker room talk is
Hollywood “scripted”

I do my workouts
among more humble people,
like those in Glendale.

Not so important
to them to be more clever
than people like me.

If I Were Your Shrink

If I were your shrink I would ask you one question.
“How am I different from your father?”

Pondering this question will help you see me (your shrink, and by extension all other men) as individuals rather than players in an improv production of your half-written disowned autobiography. This is what the unexamined life amounts to: a play in which others become the significant others in your life-story-as-novel project without signing on for the role. These things are only my opinion and of course you may take exception but up to now you have never disagreed with anything I have said. Nor have you agreed, remarked, or even responded. Silence can be an answer in itself and some silences echo a quiet murmur of assent, so please consider the question and answer silently if that pleases you. How am I different?

All men would do well to ask the women in their lives this question. “What makes me different from your father?” I pose the question not to gain the attention of women who can answer it, but for the protection of men involved with women who can‘t.

As with any question, the response gives information about the responder as well as about the subject. While it's true that silence fails to leave a question unanswered, there is yet a more vacuous response than silence. That response would be "There is no difference." -- no distinction between shrink and father, or boyfriend and father, or a whole string of displaced aggression victims and the father who deserves it but can never be paid back for neglect and abuse that clouds the eyes of women who then become love's commandos with night vision goggles which overlay the landscape with cross-hairs on the image of Dad, the target. Woe unto the poor man who wanders into that line of fire.

So ask the question, guys. And if there is no answer, or the answer is nothing, then you would do well to start running. The woman who sees only her father in the men she engages is a tiger to run from and keep on running while you still have legs.

If I were your shrink, I would serve these issues to you for lunch, along with...

Vanilla Curry Chicken Salad
Broiled Salmon / Honey Mustard
Ahi Tuna / Sushi Ginger
Turkey Burgers
Asian Mystery Sauce
Blueberries

The doctor is in...


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