The Brothers Inniss

If you’ve never seen Merrily We Roll Along, you’re not alone.  No one else has seen it either.  It should be required viewing for any artist in their mid-twenties as the story is a shining example of success turned tragedy.  The play opens in 1976 showing us the lives of three ex-best friends.  One is a Hollywood producer, one an award-winning playwright and one an alcoholic theater critic.  The plot unfolds through a backwards narrative.  After each scene, the chorus comes out and sings, "How did we get here?" and the clock rolls back a few years.  The final scene is three hopeful twenty-somethings standing on a roof in New York City in 1957 with big dreams and infinite possibilities.  But because you know where they end up, because you've known this since the opening scene of the show, that they're already torn apart, miserable, broken... you leave the theater wanting to punch a kitten in the face.  It’s awesome.

I've known Chris and Charles Inniss for about ten years.  We’ve worked together, shared the stage in various bands and have spent a few long nights with crappy beer and fun conversations about art, pop music and girls.  Last Thursday, I went to a reading of their new play, “Written in the Stars.”  The show is about a high school senior hoping to make it into dance school while trying to balance family issues, race issues, identity issues and a really attractive blond girlfriend... who has issues.  Like all relevant art, taking things we’ve seen and combining them in a new way, the show could be looked at as High School Musical meets Save the Last Dance.  And this was a reading, not a workshop or preview so there’s a lot of work to be done.  But the gems were there.  A few of the songs had decent grooves, a bit of the dialogue was easy and authentic, and it had a beginning, middle and end.  Also, did I mention the attractive blond?

The point of the reading was for the Innisses (Innisseez?  Innissi?) to see where they are in the process.  What lines worked?  What songs resonated with the audience?  What’s missing?  Every artist has in their heads a finished picture of their work.  The key is bring that ideal to life while staying objective about it.  Otherwise, you’ll hear the perfect rhythms of what the show can be while the audience has to suffer through the imperfect reality of what the show is.  Hopefully the reading helped Chris and Charles step out of their heads and see all the hard work that has yet to be done.  The baseline was boring as hell.  One of the melodies sounded like a drunken orangutan trying to yodel.  The first twenty minutes of the show should be whittled down to five minutes.

Oh, and did I mention that the show is really fucking good?

That’s the bonus of a reading like this – if it’s good, you’ll know immediately.  Sure, it needs work.  But it’s pre rough draft and the audience already loved it.  The show has a heartbeat – it’s bigger than Chris and Charles.  If they keep chipping away at it, tossing a song or two and bringing back a piece from the garbage, they’ll get it to the next level and the next and the next.  Potential.  I wasn’t just watching a work-in-progress, I was seeing the life equation we all participate in: Growth + Work = Success.  Note: this is a balanced equation, not a step 1: growth, step 2: work, step 3: success, step 4: death.  Success is loving the moment you’re in, the process, the journey.  That said, if the Brothers Inniss stay on their journey, people will pay them to see their shows eventually because their shows are going to get better and better.

Merrily asks the question over and over “How did we get here?”  The answer is simple: they were there from the beginning.  The three friends were always going to separate and hate each other.  Their failure was misunderstanding each others’ intent.  While they stood on the rooftop dreaming, each one was picturing a slightly different fantasy.  Luckily, the Brothers Inniss aren’t twenty flights up, they’re in the street pouring over their art, rewriting it, honing it.  They’ll make it.  They’ve already made it.  And in a few years, I’ll go to their shows on Broadway, smiling because they’re finally getting paid for it.

My Night with Adobo

I love food.  Truly.  I memorized a recipe for homemade chocolate chip cookies when I was six or seven.  I learned how to make a perfect omelet in high school.  When I studied abroad during college, I collected Ghanaian recipes and sent them around to all my abroad-mates.  And last night, oh last night, it was... amazing.  When I told my coworkers what I ate, they burst out laughing – look at the giddy white kid who just discovered Spanish seasoning!  That’s right, last night I marinated skirt steak in homemade adobo (although you could argue it was more of a sofrito) and in so doing, rocketed myself into a coma of pure foodie ecstasy.  After tacos, guacamole, salsa, three coronas, two packs of gushers, all while listening to my recently acquired Fragile LP, I passed out on the couch smiling ear to ear.

My first adobo experience was in Somerville, Massachusetts a few weeks ago.  Somerville isn’t exactly the mothership of ethnic diversity but the internet tells me that 1 in 10 people who live there is Hispanic/Latino and the internet never lies.  A buddy of mine grilled skirt steaks marinated in his adobo and after one bite, I knew I needed to make it myself.  Fast forward to last night.

I arrived home late but I was determined to embrace the spicier side of my heritage (despite my florescent complexion, my last name is Guimaraes and although that's not Hispanic, Latino or Spanish, we're close enough, dammit).  First off, you combine all the ingredients in a food processor.  For a boy, this is the cooking equivalent of a sword fight with the toll booth operator to pass through the toll.  Second, you can’t have tacos without guacamole and salsa so I gleefully made a righteous mess of avocados, onions and tomatoes.  Lastly, the recipe called for beer and they sell THAT in packages of six soooooo do the math?

After food processing and marinating, I spent an hour or so catching up on current affairs.  Back into the kitchen to broil the steaks – alas, I do not own a grill.  While the steaks were cooking, I perfected my lime-juice-to-corona ratio!  Without lime, Corona has an amazing ability to taste like mule tears (stay with me here) but squeeze a lime slice into it and you’ve just produced the green potion from Legend of Zelda.

DING!  The steaks are done!

Tortilla, melt some cheese, add lettuce, tomato, onion, cover with slices of steak annnnnnd: it was as if I had never eaten before.  I sat on the couch loving every bite of seasoned goodness, washing it down with corona, a chip here or there with salsa or quac.  I couldn’t stop from moaning.  My roommate told me to quit being so dramatic but she’s a vegetarian so how could she understand my heaven?  I told her, “You don’t understand.  This is the vacation.  When I head home this weekend, I’ll have to help my mom with her computer and clean out the garage and fix the car’s rattling AC but sitting here right now, eating this delicious food, relaxing - this is the vacation.  Nothing could make it–”  And that’s when I remembered my Fragile LP.

Like wine, some years of music are better than others.  2008 gave us tremendous albums from Fleet Foxes, Cut Copy, TV on the Radio and M83.  1971 gave us Led Zeppelin III and IV, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, and Yes’s Fragile.  And like I’ve said in the past, vinyl is a great way to listen to music.  As Roundabout ended, as South Side of the Sky climaxed, as Heart of the Sunrise began... I simply passed out.  Apparently, I asked my roommate to repeat something as my eyes clothes and my head dropped to my chest.

I woke up on the couch around four in the morning still smiling.  A few hours of bed-sleep later, I cleaned all the dishes and fantasized about today’s lunch.  I’m listening to 808’s and Heartbreak (another 2008 gem).  Maybe I’ll do Indian buffet...

pedal pedal pedal

Every day, I ride my bicycle from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan.  I race up Clinton Street past a wonderful crossing guard who cries, “Come on biker-baby!  Gotta get to work baby!” as she waves me along.  Up and over the Manhattan Bridge, I shoot through the north end of Chinatown, the East Village, up 1st Ave for 50 blocks until landing on 49th street.  I do this Monday to Friday in the rain in the snow on the weekends late at night.  I ride in 20 degree weather and 100 degree weather.  I love it.  I need it.  Instead of taking the subway, numbing myself to the world between A and B, I experience the complete transition from my apartment to my office.  Maybe in a few weeks I’ll write about detours and exploration but for now, I’ll try to stay focused.

I ride fast, I ride purposefully and I’m always aware of my surroundings.  I am really good at this and I’ve got my own rule-book for what’s acceptable and what is not.

I ride a Trek FX 7.2, a hybrid with dominant road-bike genes.  I use clipless pedals which means I wear bike cleats that snap onto the pedals like snow boots.  I sawed a few inches off my handlebar so that it’s narrow enough for me to squeeze between cars but stable enough that I don’t fall over.  I always wear my helmet.  If there’s an obstacle in the bike lane on 1st/2nd Avenue, I slyly glide into car lanes to circumvent the blockage.  At red lights, I look for people crossing the street to determine the likelihood of oncoming traffic.  If it looks good, I’ll blow through.  When a pedestrian is standing in the bike lane (NYC is a pedestrian city – although they shouldn’t be in the lane, it’s without question 100% my fault if I hit them) I slide by as close as possible to scare them back onto the sidewalk.  I don’t have a bell.  Instead I bark, “Hey! Hey! Hey!” like a dog whenever someone is in my path.

Lest you find me boastful, let me take a moment to acknowledge the riders who’s skills I could only dream of possessing.  I’m talking about the guys who pull eight G’s down 2nd Ave.  Pro riders, messengers mostly, who’s bikes were put together with the lightest, simplest, dumpster scraps they could find.  No gears, twelve-inch straight handlebar, tattooed calf muscles bursting through rolled-up jeans.  These guys were riding through Manhattan when Kids hit the theaters.  Hell, they were probably extras in the movie.  They can do whatever they want because they are the best pilots in the city.  If you’re not an above-average rider like me, and you’re not a pro-city rider like them, take special note of the following:

The bike lane is not a yellow brick road you can weave down humming Savage Garden melodies.  Similarly, if you ride a Dahon (a folding bike with 16-inch wheels) you are not going to qualify for the Tour de France.  You’re not even riding a real bike!  You look silly.  Speaking of silly, why is the guy behind me wearing a spandex pro jersey and where’s he going on his $4,000 road bike?  We’re in Chinatown!  Apparently, no one explained to him that drafting doesn’t work when you’re only going 10 miles an hour.  As he rides three inches behind my back tire, I contemplate slamming the brakes so that he crashes into me.  Imagine the conversation that we’d have!  Maybe he’ll reevaluate his life or at least put some clothes on.  I wonder if he speaks French.

Continuing on, if you’re riding the wrong way down the street and are not delivering anything, you are an asshole.  No, no stop, I, no, look, I just, you are an asshole.  Likewise, fixed-gear bicycles are as crucial to hipster status as pocket squares and both are stupid.  Pedestrians on their cell phones crossing the street at a red light without looking should be lobotomized for their own safety.  I said NYC is a pedestrian city, not a dumbass city - get a hold of yourself.

If you’re a solid rider, by all means keep riding.  Make up some of your own rules and adhere to them.  Maybe you'll become a curmudgeon like me.  But if you’re sub-par, if you’re below the grade, if you’re any of the offenders above... please, please stop riding/walking in this town.  Honestly, you are the worst thing to happen to New York since Starbucks killed the dollar cup of coffee.  Eventually, I will find you and pop your tires.

PS, I want one: http://bamboobikestudio.useful-arts.com/

What Now?

This American Life broadcast an episode in January called “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory” where a writer, Mike Daisey, spoke about his experience in China at the factories building iPhones and iPads.  A couple weeks ago, This American Life broadcast another episode called “Retraction” where they explained the falsehoods in the January episode.  I listened to both episodes, became a little obsessed with the story (googling it everyday to find the latest development) and below are my thoughts.

Retraction, the 460th episode of “This American Life” is one of the most dramatic radio broadcasts I’ve ever listened to.  Although we are in a post-radio era, podcasts like “Radiolab” and “Wait wait... don’t tell me” are as popular among my friends in our adulthood as LPs of “The Lone Ranger” and “The Shadow” were for my father in his childhood.  And due to the portability of music in the aughts, my friends and I listen to everything all the time everywhere.  So when I say that Retraction is compelling, I’m stacking it against the plethora of radio that I pump into my brain all day.  We’re talking about fifteen-second silences between Mike Daisy and Ira Glass where for a moment, you wonder if your iPod is broken.  Ira questions Mike like a neurosurgeon, delicately shaving layers of a tumor, restrained and eloquent, exposing the reality that Mike Daisy lied.  He lied to fact checkers, he lied to reporters, he lied to the thousands upon thousands of people who listened to his story.

I am not writing this from an angry place.  I am writing because I feel awful for Daisey and (obviously) worse for the factory workers.  His intentions (the altruistic humanist ones as opposed to the successful writer/actor ones) were to light up the reality of where our beautiful, high-functioning gizmos come from not unlike Eric Schlosser or Michael Pollan exposing our food origins in Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  Although he stretched the truth, incorporating kernels of multiple stories into one giant episode, Daisey was trying to address the big picture.  There is child labor, repetitive motion injuries and 16 hour workdays in China.

Should I stop using my iPhone?  How come I never paused to think about what I was buying and why it costs so little compared to what it can do?  Did you know that if you want to buy a pair of pants, pants,  made by union members in America, it costs more than one hundred dollars?  The reason is because in this country, we pay people to work an eight-hour day with benefits and rotating responsibilities.  And the labor cost is only a small part of what raises the price.  The speed and cost at which China can produce one million iPads depends on multiple factories capable of immediate changes using a near-infinite number of overtime workers.

So if it took longer and cost more, would you still buy it?  How much would would you pay for pride let alone a clear conscience?

Like many, Daisy’s bent truth aimed at awareness has numbed me to the very real story.  It sounds awful, then it’s untrue, but the reality is still awful.  My brain can’t handle that back and forth.  There are nets around the walls of the Foxconn factory so that people cannot commit suicide by leaping from the roof.  There are people working by hand, repeating the same movement over and over all day, everyday to build your iPhone.  Their hours are horrible and their pay is a joke and they're working 70 hours a week in these conditions to save and get ahead.

Towards the end of Retraction, Charles Duhigg explains that we’re not only condoning the reality but are, by purchasing and using the product, creating the reality.  Although the facts, the fact-facts as Lewis Black calls them, aren’t as Hollywood-dramatic as Daisey presented, we must look at our consumption and daily routine.  The world is too small, too connected for us to ignore how our actions affect other people.  The question is: what do we do now that we know?

You can find both Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory and Retraction at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives.  I encourage you to listen to the original then listen to the Retraction.  It’s worth two hours of your time, I promise.

Dear Music

This weekend, I picked up a few albums I’ve been meaning to dig into for some time.  The latest Sufjan Stevens, the latest Dream Theater and a few in between.  As I walked through Carroll Gardens yesterday in the pleasant temporal nightmare that is Daylight Savings Time, I listened mostly (embarrassingly) to Dream Theater.  You know, I say embarrassingly but A dramatic Turn of Events is fucking out of this world.  Anyway, last night as I was going to bed, Sufjan.  This morning on the way to work, Panda Bear.  Now that I’m at work I've got the Chick Corea record that won a Grammy oozing out of my desk speakers.  The soundtrack of my life is varied and incredible and most importantly, always playing.

Picture a basic American Colonial house.  Got the shape?  Now paint it brown and scale it down to the size of a Happy Meal container.  Handle for a roof, six buttons on the second floor and a little plastic window right in the middle... what you’re picturing is my Cassette Player from the 1980s.  The most effective tool in my defense against the enemies of childhood: boredom, monsters and having to listen to my siblings.  Basically, if you took this image:

and photo shopped my Tape Player over the Teddy Bear, you’d get my nightly sleeping experience.

Like most parents, my folks would ground me now and then.  But it wasn’t about candy or phone-time or TV.  No, if they really wanted to punish me, my parents would take away my tape player for the night.  I’m not sure if they knew it was my Aragorn to the Boogeyman’s Voice of Sauron but they definitely knew I loved the thing.  And it had magical powers; a soul, even!  One night, while listening to the instrumental part of the Ghost Busters soundtrack, the curtains in my room blew open just a little during the creepiest section of the score.  I very nearly shat myself.  I don’t know if my tape player thought I’d enjoy the experience or if it was actually a sadistic anti-hero; a deranged defender sociopath who loved and hated me.  Whoa.

The first tape I owned was Pearl Jam’s Versus.  My older sister gave it to me and the first time I played it, I was terrified of the rock-awesomeness that exploded out of the single speaker.  I didn’t get it.  I didn’t like it.  I couldn’t stop listening to it.  Every night, I’d play it again and eventually realized I was in love with the album.  It took me fifteen years to fully embrace the lesson that sometimes you end up loving things you can’t stand on the first go around.

Eventually, I moved on to a “My First Sony”.  I couldn’t tell you what I listened to at night but Scott and Todd on 95.5 woke me up every morning.  The alarm could be set to one of four different sounds (including a coked-out woodpecker) or the radio.  Although I’m not a huge fan of morning radio DJs, WPLJ played a couple songs that always kick-started my morning (Jon Secada’s “Just Another Day”, All-4-One’s, “I Swear”, or Genesis’, “I Can’t Dance”).

Next up, a Sony Boom box, tons of CDs and leaving Top 40 radio for classic rock and jazz: Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin.  Then Phish, Miles' Kind of Blue & Coltrane's Blue Train... it’s amazing that the laser in the CD tray didn’t burn a hole through the discs I spun day in and day out.

Fast forward through CD players, iPods, a shower radio (really awesome) and I now have an iMac full of music, a Technics turntable and two boxes of LPs, a bunch of MFSL recordings, three pairs of headphones (Klipsch, Grado’s, and a pair of in-ear monitors) and an itching desire to snag a sweet pair of cabinet speakers for the living room.

I want to thank someone.  My sister Cate for that Pearl Jam album.  My sister Jen who taught me not to “kill a record” by overplaying it.  My dad for the time we listened to “Gimme Shelter” in the garage even though we were already home.  My mom for encouraging me to sing along to Tina Turner in the car.  Kyle & Congdon for writing music, Drew & Greg for playing music, the wind-up, Skidmore.  So many people gave me so much music that really, I want to thank Music itself.  Victor Wooten says Music is a woman and she's all about communication.  If that’s the case, she’s most incredible woman who’s ever walked the earth.  I want to thank her for letting me play and work and create and listen.

Meanwhile, back to work for me.  But not before queuing up LCD Soundsystem and turning the dial on my desk speakers a little further to the right.

Search and a Relaunch

Recently, I met a girl at a bar.  Meeting new people is not an unusual occurrence as I tend to talk to everyone all the time so I could just as easily say recently I met this dude near the Gowanus Canal.  In point of fact, the bridge over my favorite Superfund Site was up the other night and a bodega delivery guy and I were both stopped on one side.  We started talking and it turns out his brother works in a piano repair shop and I’m going to buy a guitar from him and I’m getting off topic.

Let’s start over.  Recently, I met a girl at a bar.  I called her afterwards but didn’t hear back until over a week later.  Apparently, she went searching for me on the web and didn’t find a Facebook page but did find this blog.  And she called!  If you couldn’t tell from the exclamation point, I was completely shocked.  So I looked through all 78 posts on this electronic chalkboard of nonsense and tried to figure out what in God’s name prompted her to call.  Was it the three posts about quitting smoking?  Maybe it was the post about getting my ass kicked the morning I tried to get to work early.  I know it wasn’t the post about the two old people I saw walking in front of me one afternoon – that one made very little sense to everyone except for my girlfriend at the time as it was sort of a love note to her.

After an hour or so I gave up trying to figure it out but started looking at the page views and statistics of this grammar Guy Fawkes.  Ready?  My blog has been viewed almost two thousand times.  Two thousand.  Who in the Christ is reading this?  It turns out, there are some commonalities: some people are searching for innovative ways to dust off a desk.  Understandable as the whole, wipe with damp cloth thing can be a bit overwhelming for some.  Some folks are looking for me or any number of my Portuguese doppelgangers.  (Spoiler alert: if you see a tilde over the second “a” in my last name, you’re looking at a different James Guimaraes.  In fact, you’re looking at James Guimarães.)

In any case, I’m not an expert at interpreting web statistics but apparently somebody read this and I’ve been itching to start writing again so here we go with round two.  Hopefully, my current employers won’t mind and my future employers will be as entranced as that girl that one time.

Six Days

Against the wall to the right of my computer screen is a torn-out page from the March/April 2010 issue of Motorcycle Classics Magazine. The temptress-picture of California Highway 58 on it has mocked my office life for longer than I can remember.  Next to frayed edge of desert is a Triumph poster showing the 2011 Speed Triple.  Although I can't see inside the rider's helmet, I can hear what he's saying.  I've had motorcycles on my mind for over five years.  It started as an idea, morphed into an obsession and finally: reality.

Everything I've experienced so far has felt different on the inside than it appeared on the outside.  College, first love, joining the almighty work-force.  But in all honesty, I don't have any expectations about next week.  I know where my skills are at and what I'll need to do to improve them.  I know where I'm starting and ending on a map.  I know what I'm wearing and what I'm carrying.  But I have no clue what it will feel like rolling through Green Mountain National Forest (right past Killington Resort).  Not an inclination what "pushing the bike down" at 60 miles per hour will feel like.  I don't know what it will sound like, look like or taste like.

With the exception of the drums, there is nothing in this world that I have wanted more than this.  In six days, I am riding my very first motorcycle.

Edit on September 11, 2012: You know, looking back on this over a year later, I have to correct something.  The last sentence of this post reads as if I had never rode a motorcycle before.  That's simply not true.  The first time I rode a motorbike was in Burkina Faso in 2007.  I acquired my motorcycle license in the spring of 2010.  Thus, I've been riding for a couple years.  The emphasis of that last sentence was meant to be on the "MY" indicating I'd be riding the first motorcycle I've ever owned.  Also, please note, I bought the motorcycle in February of 2011, a full four months before picking it up.