Engaging daily

I might have taken "Julie & Julia" too seriously because I'm going to blog about my engagement and wedding with the hopes someone turns it into a book. Yes, I'm engaged. Chris proposed to me on Christmas Eve in front of my whole family. It was ballsy and brave and sweet and wonderful. I said yes and it's on.

Sooooo, in the hopes of getting a book deal that will secure my future, I'm going to write about the wedding. It's the only thing people want to talk to me about anyway so why not? Seriously, it's as if life before the engagement ceased to exist and now I'm in weddinglandia. I've been advised to enjoy it and will my best to.

I had actually hoped that Chris would propose during the holidays. He did and now I look like the good guy, not the person who was going to pressure him about it in the new year.

So many thoughts have gone through my head these past days. The fact that my sleeping around days are over. That I've picked a partner who will make a great dad. That I love Chris' politeness and dorkiness and thoughtfulness. That I never thought I'd end up with someone like him: He's a straight arrow for the most part. He didn't sleep around. He hasn't taken drugs. He's not a stoner.

The fact that I'm taking the plunge in my late '30s is also a game changer. I'm not a giddy bride-to-be, giggling and telling everyone I can think of about the news. I've been spreading the news slowing, making sure I actually speak to my friends/family to tell them, not leave a message or send a text. I had been trying to tell a friend about the engagement for days but every time I called her, she returned the call with a text message. Then she asked me why it took me so long to tell her. Uh, it wouldn't have if she had actually picked up the phone to call.

Neither my mother nor Chris' mother was excited about the news. My mother was not smiling when the rest of the family was going wild during the proposal. Was it shock? Disapproval? Same with Chris' mom. He announced the news right after we had taken our seats for Christmas dinner. It was Chris, his sister, his mother, and his mother's roommate and no one got out of their seats after hearing the news. No one got up to hug me. It was like, "That's great. Can you pass the butter?" Later in car Chris said his mother was happy, she just didn't show it. I can't complain, my mother was the same way.

Our fathers were much more vocal about their excitement/approval. My dad was happy and congratulatory. His father and stepmother had him call me as soon as they heard. That was nice. They were excited and offered to assist us in wedding planning in any way possible.

What do you do when you're good at nothing?

Ah, I was so spirited in my last post. I'm still excited about Poptimist, which should be on streets now, but I am not excited about the job I did on the December issue.


I gave it my all: editing stories, giving feedback, getting stories rewritten. I even wrote up a band myself -- San Diego's Tape Deck Mountain. (This was less of an exercise in writing than it was a way of making my budget. I decided I could up writer's rate if I wrote a 200-word article and two album reviews myself.)


I devoted nights after work, my Fridays off, and weekends to the project once all the stories were turned in. I read and reread the copy, changing punctuation here, checking spelling there.


Last Sunday I sat with the publisher for four hours as we made last-minute changes. The artist she had contracted wasn't working out so there was a lot of last-minute scrambling. She sent the final version to me an hour before it went to the printer. All the last-minute changes produced some errors, which I was quite proud of catching on my final read-through.


This all went to pot on Sunday. I had been out from morning to evening throwing a friend's baby shower and was horrified to see this email from our publisher awaiting me at home: "the concert listings all say 'November.' "


What?!!! Where?!!!


I scrambled to the print-outs I had gone through for the issue. The error wasn't on our club picks pages, it wasn't on our live picks pages, whew. Oh, but there it was, on the club listings pages. Clear as day it said "November" on the top of the page instead of December. It said "November" four different times.


I had poured over these listings many times. I changed dates, spellings, punctuation but apparently never looked up at the header. Oy!


This drops our publication from awesome to amateur and it's my fault. The buck stops here. I am paid to catch these kinds of errors. I take pride in catching these types of errors.


So for the last couple of days I have been blue. I am earning a living right now as a copyeditor yet I didn't catch what is now an obvious mistake. So if I'm not a good copyeditor or a good writer, what exactly am I good at? How can I sell myself as either when this keeps haunting me?


I dread seeing the magazine now.

Introducing Poptimist!

I am the editor of L.A.'s newest music magazine, Poptimist. Electronic copy here: http://issuu.com/poptimist/docs/november

It's a labor of love and gets the creative juices flowing again. It's my first time as a magazine editor and I am digging it. We'll be out again in December. It's available for free in L.A.'s hipster spots -- record stores, Rudy's Barber Shop, boutiques, coffee shops, etc.

iPod shuffle -- don't buy it!

I recently purchased the newest generation of the iPod shuffle. My original shuffle disappeared between the gym and my house one day and I really like it for working out so I bit the bullet and shelled out $59 (plus tax) for the latest one on the market.

I hated it.

True to advertising, it is a bitty little thing. Thinner and longer than the square one I had, and free engraving was included with purchase. Well, my "Sofia" personalized gadget is going back this week.

The shuffle's deal-breaker is that besides the off/on button, the navigation controls are all on a slim clicker attached to the headphones. The clicker hangs at about chin level and is a pain in the ass to use. You can't use any other headphones for this shuffle because the commands are built in to the headphones. Terrible idea.

The good news is that Macintosh has good customer service and is taking back my iPod shuffle free of charge. They're even paying for Fed-Ex. I'll now wait until the shuffle charge is cleared on my credit card and then start searching for a used, previous generation shuffle.

Crenshaw Blvd., it's where I'm at

A look at the Sigalert website before leaving work indicated that all freeways home were jammed. Accident here, slow there....so I decided I'd take Crenshaw Blvd. as far as it would take me. The commute home is an hour no matter how I drive so I was fairly certain this wouldn't lengthen the trip by too much.

South down Crenshaw it was. It's a rough commute approaching the 10 and past Rodeo, but once you clear Martin Luther King Blvd. it's smooth sailing. And it's pretty too. Trees line the street all the way through Leimart Park and when you drive through Inglewood, there's a pretty center divider with sculpted trees.

It was an especially clear afternoon and I wish I could remember which cross street had this beautiful view. Sadly, the landscape turns into a nightmare south of the 105. It's crazy what a difference there is north and south of the freeway. Ugly power lines as far as the eye could see once past the freeway at which point, I cut my cruise short and took the 105 to the 110 south. I made it home in an hour. So instead of the usual gridlock, I saw something different today.

On another note, I went karaoke-ing for the first time in ages last night. Chris and I had dinner with his friend Peter from college and some other people, including Shumway and Marc. They wanted to get drinks afterwards but it was heavy metal night at the password-protected M Bar (R Bar?) and we voted to change venues. I suggested the Brass Monkey because we had driven by it earlier that night and we had the best time!

We arrived between 8 and 9 and were one of the first groups there. This was cool because we were called up to sing quickly. Chris and I started with Weezer's "Buddy Holly." Chris played a mean air guitar during the song. Next came "Seven Nation Army," which was lots of fun. I'll totally do the White Stripes again. The drinks flowed and we got progressively worse. The low point was our rendition of "Sabatoge." Marc, Chris and I were screaming into the microphones and jumping all over the place. The ending "Whhhhyyyy??!!" cry was super fun to sing but I'm sure it was no fun to listen to. Good times. Our evening ended with a "Love Today" quartet. The crowd was not into that song. That reaction was disappointing but the evening was such an unexpected good time that I did not care.

Our bikes were stolen from Chris's garage sometime during the evening too. City living.

Built to Spill at Sunset Junction -- Aug. 23, 2009

Built To Spill shows can be hit or miss. I've seen them in full-on rock/guitar god mode (Troubadour, July 2007) and I've also experienced their long-winded, super mellow jammy appearances (House of Blues, sometime in the early or mid 2000s). Which band would show up for Sunset Junction? Could Doug Martsch and his players overcome the overcrowding, heat, and notoriously bad sound that is synonamous with the street fair? Or would I have to resort to my plan B and drive down to Santa Ana to see them Tuesday night in a proper venue?

The show was slated to start at 7:50 but by the time we got there around 7:40, the band was already soundchecking. I was super thankful for this as a bad mix would spell disaster for their layers of guitars. That soundcheck morphed into their first jam of the night. I don't know if they were playing a proper song but it went on for a bit. The stage lights were eventually turned on and just like that, we were in the midst of the show.

I didn't recognize the first few songs that the band played. Maybe they were off the upcoming album or from discs I didn't own, I'm not sure. But when the hits started, it was on. There was "Car," "Big Dipper," "Sidewalk," "You Were Right." Off the "You in Reverse" album came a blistering "Goin' Against Your Mind" and the haunting "Traces." There were other songs I recognized and jumped around to but don't know the names of. I wasn't exactly in the state of mind to keep a set list but I do know that they played an unbelievably rocking version of "The Plan" and that their encore song went more than 15 minutes on one song and kept us wanting more.

If I had to be critical, I'd say Doug's voice isn't as strong as it used to be: He'd stop singing lyrics during songs and fall back on guitar. It didn't matter. Save your voice Doug, the music is enough. There was also a miscommunication between band members during a song in which one guitarist was ready to launch into jam mode and the others were still doing the refrain. Minor points.

As technically fantastic as they are on their instruments, Built to Spill's members barely move during the show. Martsch says a simple "thanks" after a song and it's on to the next. It's not to say they're not engaging, just they are quite serious about the task at hand. You try playing guitars as fast and furiously as they do in unison. Doug even commented, "It may not look like it but we're having fun."

Another aspect to the band is that it is no sweat for them to play 20-minute songs. Open a window to a jam and they'll take it. But these are jams in a much different sense than the Grateful Dead. It's not about one guy doing a solo and the next guy doing a solo and the drummer taking over before the next guy does a solo. From what I've seen, there is a purpose to Built To Spill's jamming. There is a beginning, middle, and end. We may not be able to distinguish it, but all parts are playing together without showboating. There's nothing quite like being pulled back into a melody after getting lost on a musical tangent.

The band's proficiency, the cool California breeze, the small-ish crowd that allowed us to get comfortably close to the stage, and most importantly, the music, added up to a jamtastic L.A. appearance.

p.s. I highly recommend listening to Built To Spill's live album from 2000 to get a taste of their live shows. The version of "Car" on that album is great as is "Virginia Reel Around the Fountain," Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer" and the 19-minute version of "Broken Chairs."

Museum pet peeve

Recently returned from a week-long trip to New York City. Chris and I were there for a wedding and squeezed in lots of touristing.

I had been to NY many times before but this was the first time I went to MoMa and the Met. These are the major leagues of museums. We don't have anything comparable in L.A. Maybe the Getty, but it doesn't have the quantity of big hitters that its NY counterparts do.

MoMa was absolutely mind-blowing. Art's greatest hits, if you will. You turn a corner and bam! There's Picasso's "Three Musicians." Or Jasper John's "American Flag." Or Matisse's dancers. There was a room of Mexican art too with the real pieces of work I had only seen as prints growing up. The place is so packed with top works that Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World" was relegated to a hallway leading to the restrooms! I might have missed it had nature not have called.

There used to be an etiquette in museums that allowed people time in front of a work before they moved on or moved back for a fuller view. This was not the case at MoMa or the Met. I was constantly peeved by the heavy presence of cameras and their owners who, in essence, take stills of stills. In some cases, they even take video of stills, which is ridiculous considering the pieces are inanimate objects 99 percent of the tim.

People would pose for pictures in front of pieces, throw you looks if you walked into their photos; snap at you to get out of the frame.

Excuse me but the whole point of shelling out $20 for a museum is to experience the art. The art that's hanging right in front of you. The art that a photo couldn't possibly capture.

These people need to stop ruining the experience for those of us who understand that seeing the work in person outweighs ever seeing it duplicated in any form, even the digital one.