Neil Fein's Blog

Went to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It's very eclectic, in all senses of the word. There's everything from an exhibit of ancient musical instruments to a hall of Raphael paintings, from a room filled with statue casts (i.e., forgeries) to an exhibit of Chinese armor and arms.

Afterwards, we had crepes in a small restaurant and then took a series of buses back to the flat. And yes, we rode in the upper level of the bus; it very quickly turns from being the novelty of traveling above the level of the other traffic into a bus ride like any other.

We spent yesterday walking around London, in the morning in search of a grocery store, and in the afternoon in search of bookstores and the Twinings factory. The reason all of this was so challenging was that it was 26 December, Boxing Day, and most stores were closed.

Asad had a brainstorm and we hopped the tube to Golder's Green, a predominantly Jewish area, where -- Yes! -- We found a place for breakfast: a very nice Israeli restaurant/cafe that, oddly enough, wasn't kosher; and an open supermarket. And an open coffeeshop, Caffe Nero, which I misread as Coffee Nerd. I like myname better.

We dropped food back at Asad's flat, and went back out strolling along Oxford Street and the Strand, looking for bookstores but really just looking. I saw three (!) street performers doing the don't-I'look-just-like-a-statue-wait-I'll-move-and-startle-you or similar act.

Woke up this morning at 9am local time (4am EST), and went into the kithen to get breakfast. Not wanting to wake up Asad or Martha, I fumbled around in the kitchen looking for the heater. ^[1]

I washed some dishes from last night's chili and alcohol^[2] shabbes dinner, which served to warm me up a little. I went back into the bedroom, sitting at a window to get light while reading, and I saw the sun for the first time since landing. Well, I saw the sun relected in the hood of a blue parked smartcar; I think that counts.

Asad has a Steinberger Spirit^[3] which I spent some time playing through headphones. It's 11:02am as I blog and I'm still the only one awake. I type this with a bowl of cereal between my arms on the table, and a glass of milk to my right. Asad has been here 6 months and still doesn't have a coffeemaker.

^[1] Red wine and Grey Goose Vodka; Asad says this is a drinking culture, so it seemed polite to comply with local custom.

^[2] Asad keeps the kitchen doors to the outside open at night, for some reason I've yet to fathom. And it gets cold here at night.

^[3] Smallish headless electric guitar, very nice action, a fast neck.

We've eaten spicy eggs for lunch that are even now as I type on Asad's tiny laptop burning their way through my stomach's lining. I'm sipping diet coke and listening to general kitchen banter. I haven't seen much of London yet, but it's Christmas and the city is pretty quiet; this is a good day for us to be half-comatose from jet lag.

Asad is asking about pickup trucks while washing dishes and Martha's repeating this comment in a faux Texan accent. I suspect today's activities will involve walking, wandering and drinking -- I'd love to have a pint in a London pub. ^[1]

Asad's apartment is very, very cool. 3 bedrooms,ranging in size from almost closet-sized to nearly New Jersey-sized. (One roommate is almost never here -- it's easy to guess which room he lives in.)


^[1] I can't stand beer, but I want to see what all the fuss is about.

Have arrived in London. Am hungry and tired, will post more later.

Forgot to post this at the time. Played Spook Handy's Open Mic at the Corner Tavern in New Brunswick. (Also take a look here for me missing the last one.) A good open mic, I played:

There's That Song
From The Beginning
Eyes Up Front
Rock Creek
Never Had A Brother

(Posted on 15 February 2004, will sort into 23 December 2003.)

Sorry I've not posted in a while. You may have noticed that this page looks different. I'm working on getting the blog to look like the rest of the site, so it will be a fairly seamless transition back and forth, as I now have permalinks from the calendar page directly to the corresponding blog entries. This is all part of an effort to make the site more than just a listing of where I'll be playing, more than just a listing of "hey, I played these open mikes".

Speaking of which: I can't guarantee anything yet, but I'm going to try to play an open mic this weekend, likely Sunday night. I'll search the local open mikes on this site and see what looks good. I'm also going to try to play an open mike in London, but I don't know if that'll work out yet. Consider these rumors. Or rumours.

I've been having fun bidding on used hardcover books on eBay lately. It's cheaper than going to a regular bookstore!

Martha and I are getting excited about our upcoming vacation to London; we haven't packed yet, but we're getting all excited over the prospect. Asad has been emailing us, and preparations on that end are pretty much done, as in where we'll meet and so on. He's buying all sorts of Kosher food; Asad's really a nice guy, "enthusiastic" is a good word. I'll try to post from Merrie Olde England if I get net access.

Sorry I've not posted in a while. You may have noticed that this page looks different. I'm working on getting the blog to look like the rest of the site, so it will be a fairly seamless transition back and forth, as I now have permalinks from the calendar page directly to the corresponding blog entries. This is all part of an effort to make the site more than just a listing of where I'll be playing, more than just a listing of "hey, I played these open mikes".

Speaking of which: I can't guarantee anything yet, but I'm going to try to play an open mic this weekend, likely Sunday night. I'll search the local open mikes on this site and see what looks good. I'm also going to try to play an open mike in London, but I don't know if that'll work out yet. Consider these rumors. Or rumours.

I've been having fun bidding on used hardcover books on eBay lately. It's cheaper than going to a regular bookstore!

Martha and I are getting excited about our upcoming vacation to London; we haven't packed yet, but we're getting all excited over the prospect. Asad has been emailing us, and preparations on that end are pretty much done, as in where we'll meet and so on. He's buying all sorts of Kosher food; Asad's really a nice guy, "enthusiastic" is a good word. I'll try to post from Merrie Olde England if I get net access.

Note: Spook rescheduled me for next week, all is well. Please regard this as a rant from within the moment. --N

Amy Marie and I once spent an hour waiting outside someone's apartment for a songwriter's circle to get started, and only belatedly thought to call upstairs; it had been cancelled that day.

Okay, that's some perspective. Cut to yesterday, when I thought the same thing was happening:

Got to Spook Handy's open mike at the Corner Tavern in New Brunswick at 9pm. I'd found the thing through a listing on the web, and the listing indicated that it started at 7pm. The bartender said that he wasn't there, and no, we couldn't wait in the basement, away from the smoke.

Martha and I waited for a good 45 minutes and nobody showed. My throat was starting to complain, and, not knowing if it was called off for the night or what, I wrote Spook a note on the back of a business card and left it with the bartender to hand off, essentially saying eh? and what had happened. (I followed it up with an email when I got home for good measure.)

Grazina had said she might stop by, so Martha suggested we call her; I left her a message that we were leaving.

Half an hour later, I was sitting on my couch rereading The Return of The King, and (of course) Grazina called. Apparently Spook got there a little after 10. Ripping clumps of hair out of my head, I asked if he got the note, and yes, he did; she apparently spent some time trying to convince Spook that no, I'm not an unreliable idiot and so on.

Oh, and the open mic is meant to start at 10.

In all fairness, Spook isn't the one who posted this^[1], so it's not his fault even a little; I should know better than to believe anything I read on the web without verification. And he probably wrote the starting time in one of his emails. But damn, this feels bad.

I'm going to see if I can find another open mic somewhere here in NJ before I leave for London, as this left a bad taste.


^[1] this link indicates, at the time of writing this post, that the open mike starts at 7pm; I've emailed this board with a correction.

I played a longer set than usual, over at Cleo's on Saturday night, 14 December 2003:

Eyes Up Front
I'll Wait For You
Rock Creek
Never Had A Brother

Since the place was pretty empty of musicians (myself and one other act), The audience (6 people) asked for more. I played

There's That Song
She Told It To Me Twice

A fun night. I won't be at the next open mike at Cleo's, because we'll be in England, but I'll be there again in January.

Season 5 of MASH is quite good; we're most of the way through the 3-DVD set. There are entire subplots I've never seen before. I know that these episodes were chopped up in reruns^[1], but damn!

In actuality, there's at least one episode so far, Hanky Panky^[2], where an entire subplot was (as best as I can recall) not there when last I saw it on NYC Channel 11. Although considering the time slot (11 to 11:30 pm weeknights), I could have slept through part of the episode, I suppose.

Even though it's more uneven than season 4, season 5 has some wonderful moments, mostly involving -- unexpectedly -- Frank Burns, generally my least favorite of the MASH characters. The show made a huge effort to flesh him out, and even though he's still a whiny, annoying idiot, he's at least a little bit of a human being now as well. ^[3]

In general, I highly recommend the set, particularly if you're a fan. ^[4] This season and season 4 are my favorites so far. Even though there aren't any extras included, the ability to watch the show without the laugh track makes this set -- and the other seasons as well -- excellent DVDs.

^[1] I saw all episodes of MASH in syndication with the exception of the last two seasons and the finale, Goodbye, Farewell and Amen.

^[2] There's a good reason they didn't broadcast the episode titles -- most of them are silly or stupid.

^[3] Hawkeye and BJ getting in a staged fight for Frank's birthday present is a classic moment.

^[4]Although 5 seasons of the show and the Altman film do take up a lot of shelf space.

We recorded some more on The Bile Song last night. Really, Bruce worked the board while Graz sang and I read comics. ^[1]

The Bile Song is coming together nicely as a good, funny piece. Makes me wonder what we're going to do with the thing.

Before Grazina left, I suggested trying the song in Lithuanian, or German. So we'd get something like this:

Niemand schreibt Oden zur Galle,
Niemand schreibt Galleballaden.
Niemand schreibt Oden zur Galle,
Blut ist überall, jeder singt über es.
Blut ist überall, jeder singt über es.

Uh-huh. Oh, yeah, copyright � by Grazina Strolia, Bruce Carl Meyers and Neil Fein

The German thing would work better with the "Falafel" song, I think.

^[1] DC Comics, JLA: Earth2
by Grant Morrison
This is essentially a treatment of the old "Earth-2" concept, revamped for current continuity. The art was great, particularly the cover; but underneath all the bells and whistles and slick paper, this is really an old, hackneyed idea that was old even when Star Trek tried its hand at the mirror-universe-counterparts-turn-out-to-be-evil concept. A fun read, but don't waste money. And the singing in the background is distracting.

Bruce wants to point out that, regarding JLA: Earth2, he liked the book and rather likes Grant Morrison when he doesn't get all weird and spacey. I have to agree with him that some of the characters are very well done, particularly the "evil" earth-2 people (I thought Ultraman was very coolly and evilly well done) I still don't like the book as a whole because I didn't like the way the entire plot hinged on the concept of two parallel worlds that existed for the sole purpose of maintaining the status quo between the good guys and the bad guys; I found that this really got me looking at it as ink on paper rather than a story.

In addition to the open mike this weekend

Open Mic at Cleo’s Internet Café
Highland Park, NJ
Saturday, 13 December 2003, 8pm

I'll also be hitting one next week, on the 16th

Spook Handy's Open Mic at the Corner Tavern
New Brunswick, NJ
16 December 2003, 10:25 pm

I'll update the calendar page soon.

I've been playing Eyes Up Front ^[1]a lot ever since I started doing the minus 2 std tuning business. I imagine this is a good way of stretching my voice out for both high^[2] and low tones, and it works; even though one isn't supposed to be able to do much with the tones at the bottom end of a vocal range.

But, but, but -- Eyes Up Front -- something about a song that includes the notes A, Ab and G in the basic chord progression attracts me.

^[1] I'll put a demo up over here as soon as I can find the thing.

^[2] Obviously singing lower is going to stretch my voice that way. But it also allows me to range all over a slightly larger sonic canvas; I'm thinking that giving myself more freedom makes me sound a little better, which gives me confidence to try stuff I wouldn't otherwise attempt (i.e., notes on the edge of my range). And because I'm pampering my throat with lots of water, it usually seems to work.

(to the tune of "The Lumberjack Song")

I'm a shoveller and I'm okay
I sleep all night and I salt all day.
I shovel walks, do a great job
You'd never think it snowed.
I stand up proudly, beaming,
As a plow drives down the road.

I spent the weekend mostly either thinking about, talking about, shoveling out of, or driving through the foot of snow we received in central NJ. We spent a lot of this weekend with Grazina, including driving to and from Brooklyn on Saturday evening.

Speaking of Brooklyn, we went there to attend Amy's post-thanksgiving veggie thing. Suffice to say that she has very nice friends, including Blake and Paul who very nicely hosted the thing for her, in order to have it occur in a cat-free environment. ^[1]

Which brings me to tarot readings.^[2] Amy kindly did some readings, and it was a good way to wind the party down. ^[3] Tarot is, depending on your point of view: 1) a way or divining the future, 2) a complete waste of time promulgated by superstitious idiots, 3) a fun game, or 4) a methodology of laying down symbols to use as a mask or a filter to interpret current events or answer specific questions.^[4] Amy seems to practice something that is either a combination of (1) and (4) or is something else entirely, her method is more freeform and seems to be more unconscious, at least on her part. Kind of like she's not so much laying down cards but using them as a focus.

^[1] Although there were numerous trips to her apartment next door to visit the kitties and make coffee.

^[2] Keep reading, this segue will make sense.

^[3] Told ya.

^[4] I use this one. Or did you guess that?

Knowing Irma and Vytus for 18 years^[1], you’d think I’d know them well. I’m very close friends with Grazina, their daughter, and I only see them from time to time; months or years can pass when I don't see them.

And I wouldn’t think of calling them “Irma” or “Vytus” I tend to fall back on the old standard of not calling them anything, just speaking to them while looking at them. When needed, they're Mr. or Mrs. S.

Why is this, I wonder? I think enough of them that I took the day off when needed on Tuesday, when Mr.S was in the hospital, even though I did it for Grazina’s sake and I’m sure everyone knows this. (This is the best way to act, I think, when accomanying a friend to the hospital with their family around — in uncertain situations, ask, “what would make my friend most comfortable?” — and do that.)

Really, with a friend as close as Grazina, you’d think I'd have figured out how to act by now, but I behave much the same with Craig’s parents.

Update: As of last night, VS is talking, eating, and so on, and is generally far more aware. More tests are scheduled. Will know more when I see Graz tonight.

Further update: VS is doing even better, although he's still in the hospital. Much remains to be seen.

^[1] Since I was in 10th grade

Spent much of Tuesday in various waiting areas in Valley Hospital, Graz’s Dad is there. Am very tired now.