Matthew Bittersweet

I was all alone this week because Sharon was at Guantanamo enjoying warm weather and not enjoying the simulacrum of justice there. Despite the government’s best efforts, Guantanamo is like reverse Vegas: What happens in Guantanamo never stays in Guantanamo, and Sharon’s observations are coming soon to the internet. In a nice twist, I’ll continue to hold down the fort next week when Sharon goes to the actual Vegas, where I’m sure I won’t learn what takes place.

Even though we will have elected to end torture next Tuesday, our work will not be done, so we are busy plotting our next steps. I have posted a couple blogs, including this one, which links to a very very nice article about the forum we held in UVA last week.

Elisa was unable to go to the Matthew Sweet concert, and this led to the disturbing news that many of you are too young to remember the 1990s. Remember plaid? And tapered jeans? What I’m saying is there were a lot of terrible things in the 90s, and one thing that wasn’t was Matthew Sweet, who sang these nice jangly power pop songs, which like all really nice pop songs have a melancholy undercurrent underpinning the exuberant melodies. Remember Girlfriend? Sick of Myself? I’ve Been Waiting? Next thing you’ll tell me is that you don’t remember this song by the Lemonheads. Thanks for being CEO of memory lane, Elisa.

You know what this season is really good for? Walking around outside with a hot cup of coffee. Coffee shops seem so cozy this time of year, and the to-go cup is a fine way to carry that cozyness out into the brisk cold. It is simply so much better than the summer equivalent of sipping something iced through a straw, a scenario in which your drink is way more watery and gone faster than you wanted, and the condensation on the outside of the cup is excessive.

You know what else? My friend Don reports from the IAMS Cat Championship. You’ve got to be kitten me.

Betsy, yesterday Eric commented on you as a manager, and I was glad that was a part of our celebration, because truly we all look at CAH, and we see a family – and you made it so. But I am going to amend Eric’s characterization, and say that in you, your team has a teacher: you have the energy, enthusiasm, empathy, and ability to translate the complicated into the comprehensible, of a great one.

Michael, thank you for being my friend and champion, for letting me into your life, for always having a smile, for listening always, for being the most considerate person in the world. You are our professional savior, but it is your humanity I will miss the most. There’s no one else like you.

Autumn Songs: After all that 90s exuberance, let’s bring down the lights with this song, Landslide, that makes me sad in a beautiful way, and is in some ways more autumnal that all the rousing earth-tonesy 70s hits I have played before.

Post Dinner

Last night’s dinner was fun, right? It’s nice to step back and try to see HRF through the eyes of outsiders, and remember that we are noble. And honestly, it’s nice to socialize with HRF staff. You guys are great. Many of us today may regret how excessively we participated and celebrated last night (we advocated just the right amount), but it was fun.

Next Friday is Halloween, which I sometimes call my favorite holiday. Actually Halloween is a great opening day for holidays season – between now and Jan 2, we have plenty of rituals to keep things interesting, to keep winter from being depressing, and to remind us to call our parents. It is all so much better than February ever is. So, er, Halloween. I am going to suggest – perhaps controversially – that you dress up, and eat candy, and that we all generally acknowledge that this is just the most fun holiday, that it’s not hard to let down our guard and see the world with a child-like sense of wonder, to acknowledge and enact what is good and generous and warm-spirited about humanity. So, costumes? I’m gonna, if I can think of what I’d like to be for a day. This was totally the best part of elementary school. It will make a nice way to say good-bye to our friends Michael and Betsy: Say “I’ll miss you” in costume. I am also going to carve at least a pumpkin or two in the next week: expressing yourself in pumpkin-carving is a great opportunity, and the seeds are delicious to eat. I should note that while Obam-o-lanterns and the like are acceptable, dressing up as a candidate, or Joe the Plumber, is lame.

Autumn Songs: More Tusk, I promised you, so how about the song called Tusk from the album called Tusk. That’s plenty of Tusk. (N.B.: Do not confuse Tusk with the word “tush.”) What’s fun to note about this song is that Lindsey Buckingham indeed arranged for the USC Marching Band to play in it, which makes it sound big and frantic and crazy, and marvelously fun. I wish I was there.

Tusk > New York Cares Day

Tomorrow is New York Cares Day, and I have spent hours this week fretting about it (and minutes actually preparing for it.) Tomorrow I’ll be leading some 60 volunteers (out of a total of 8000 all around the city) in rejuvenating a K-8 school in Brooklyn, painting murals, organizing storage closets, and planting bulbs. Did you know I actually had to do a google image search to remember how the lines on various athletic balls look? I’m an idiot. I may have been terrible in gym class, but I was real awesome at the rest of school. Anyway, this morning I went to the school to make sketches, and a gym-full of sixth and seventh graders were made to thank me in a chirpy chorus. And despite having grown up to be a cool adult person, I felt a lot like a sixth-grade dork just then, intimidated by the crowd. Thank goodness I didn’t have to play kickball with them.

Autumn Songs: The way you can tell that, somewhere beneath my raw enthusiasm for pop music, I am a snob (the good kind) is that my favorite Fleetwood Mac album is Tusk. No question. The mad brilliance of Lindsey Buckingham won me over, the frenetic production choices, the sound of the group falling apart gloriously, excessively, addled, heart wrenching is audible throughout. The story is good too: Rumours blew the minds of everyone, sold more copies than anything, and propelled the band into a level of fame unheard of, and drugs and sex and romantic pairings and untanglings were all the more dramatic with so much money flying around, and being on tour. Having already sold all the records, by the time they were making Tusk, they had carte blanche to do whatever, and followed up the gigantic pop hit with this crazy sprawling double-LP (that’s four whole sides!) that didn’t generate any easy hits, or sell anything like the number of copies Rumours did. You should listen to the whole thing, all in one sitting. In the meantime, a Christine McVie song, maybe the catchiest on the album, and this awesome paranoid Buckingham thing that made me first realize that I totally love that guy and this album. (Ignore the video part of the videos, as always. Spiderman? Weird.) More Tusk coming soon.

Every Sentimental Lady Needs an Old Man

Next Saturday, the 18th, is New York Cares Day, and as a diminishing number of you may remember, this is a thing I do every year. To preface my pitch, New York Cares is a great organization that facilitates volunteering throughout the city. They have projects every day, and the projects require no commitment – it’s a lot like online shopping, but with making the world a better place instead of creating credit card debt and ruining our economy. (I lead a bingo night for seniors and reading with kids at a homeless shelter throughout the year, if ever you want to try it out.) Twice a year, NYCares has a city-wide day of service, in the spring at city parks, and in the fall at schools. Volunteers paint murals, spruce up greenery, organize storage closets, and more, at schools that would otherwise be denied amateur murals. Next Saturday, I will be the site captain at PS 323 K in serious Brooklyn off the 3 train. I’ll be designing murals and directing the frenzy of volunteers. Please join me! Come talk to me or email me next week if you are interested in learning more. I am totally behind schedule, but it’s going to be awesome. This halo I sport sure goes with every outfit.

Nice hike, Kurt et al. Fall is battling summer for most awesome season of 2008. Although someone told me that Columbus Day marks the end of nice weather…

Autumn Songs: Dear everybody here who was alive in the 1970s: How come you never told me about this song, Sentimental Lady? If you didn’t know about it at the time, I forgive you and I’m sorry. It’s totally great! And it sounds the way I imagine 1972 felt, lovely, melancholy, harmonic, californian, un-self-consciously cheesy baroque lyrics. Yes, these lyrics are Too Much. But it’s just so pretty, I can’t get mad at young Fleetwood Mac. In just a few years, most of the folks then in the group would be gone, and Stevie and Lindsay would be catapulting FM to stardom, but here, young FM evoked one of my favorite emotional crises, and revealed that they were Something Special. Every Sentimental Lady needs an Old Man, so here’s a favorite Neil Young song, also autumnal, also everything awesome about the 70s. Why aren’t there more songs about this? Am I crazy? These songs totally go together.

Christine McVie makes carly's cornering fun

Wow, it’s hard to comment delicately these days while working on the non-partisan project of ending torture. I can hear you all now, in the kitchen, recapping last night’s VP debate. I hope you all made wise choices when playing your VP debate drinking games at your apartments on Main Street (drink!) If someone had told you years ago that you’d be excited about a vice presidential debate, wouldn’t you have been confused and concerned that future-you was a huge dork? Dorks we may be, but also total mavericks. 2008 = dramatic!

Sometimes the funnest thing in the world is a watergun fight on pedal boats.

Autumn Songs: I’m sad that the beach is no longer a possible weekend day trip. Just weeks ago, I’d wake up, eat brunch, and go to the beach, without giving it a second thought or a moment’s planning. The temperature is dropping, a nip in the air is picking up, and the trajectory of the season is beginning to feel set in stone. And I miss the warm sense of possibility that comes with summer, and off-hand trips to the beach. October has its own magic, of course, in red wine, pumpkins, changing leaves, soothing breezes, stylish jackets, and a childlike sense of wonder. (Try not to get a cold.) Last week I emphasized the role of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in the career-exploding of Fleetwood Mac. I was right. But! I wouldn’t want to neglect Christine McVie, another vocalist/songwriter in the band, who also wrote a lot of totally awesome FM songs, including this one. She’s so unsung! She makes carly’s cornering fun.