Number 81 CHECK

Number 81 on the bucket list- Help my dog catch a squirrel

So things are going to change on this blog. I'll be writing more often, You'll be happier and tell all your friends, and I'll be happier, because I get to share more thoughts with you. I'm looking forward to crossing more things off my bucket list, so stay tuned...

PEPPER'S STORY
When I first met my dog, Pepper, it was love at first sight. I was sitting alone in my apartment in South Boston in the beginning of 2009, and my sister, Kitty, called to ask if she could come over. I knew things were rocky between her and her boyfriend at the time, so I was prepared to put on my empathetic face. In about ten minutes, I was greeted by a severely underweight pointer named Pepper. I could tell that she hadn’t been bathed in months, and we laughed as we took turns to hold our breath and hug Pepper in a staggered rotation to ensure her that she was in a safe space.

“We have to save her,” Kitty said. She explained that after her boyfriend lost his six-figure salary job as a chef at a country club, he started canceling one luxury after another—his car, cable television, and later, the dog. He was now making 8 bucks an hour, cooking shitty bar food and could barely afford to feed himself. He grew depressed and crazy and expressed in passing that he was going to take Pepper to the animal shelter that puts dogs down, so that it would be a “clean break,” and Kitty dumped that boy, took her stuff, and dog-napped Pepper to my apartment.

And then I had a dog.

The most amazing dog really. She was so well behaved I thought. She was always leaning by my side. She knew all these amazing tricks that I didn’t have to teach her. But then I realized just how poorly treated she had been. She did whatever I told her to, because she had dependence issues and was beaten by her previous owner in shocking ways.

And every time I took her to the vet, I would discover the other ways of torture that she had endured in her past life: multiple Beebe wounds, hit by a truck, had her ears chewed in dog fights, and all this on top of her being 20 pounds underweight. I had to feed her puppy food to fatten her up for the next 6 months.

She only smiled once, and that was when I took her on long walks. She would leave her stoic manner at the apartment and the creases at the edge of her mouth would curve up gradually as she led me on these expeditions. Pointers are working dogs by nature, and she took pride in leading me on these multi-mile walks with conviction. That was until Pepper saw a squirrel. And then all obedience, dependence and any memory of her frightened past would vanish, and she had determined that her life revolved around one thing, capturing that squirrel.

The proud foster mom that I was, I was determined to help her catch a squirrel, for I felt that achieving this goal would bring her complete joy and perhaps then, she would forget her past.

I would stealthily unleash her, avoiding the “leash your dog” signs, if I thought she was within reach of an occupied squirrel. She only came close once, and confirmed that this was not a game of tag. A loud bite barely pulled out stray gray hairs from a lucky squirrel’s tail. She licked her lips. Her victory was so close.

Then, 2009 being what it was, I lost my writing job and was forced to take my old college job at the sailing center, where I got paid much less. At first, I cut my cable. Then I quit my gym…

Then I lost my apartment, and Pepper and I moved in with my parents. As I searched to find myself in the unfamiliar turf of depending on my parents, I was relieved to find that Pepper found pleasure in running around the acre long property, as well as the rest of the town.

I found personal defeat in Boston and sought relief in the New York industry, which had several job offers waiting upon my decision to move back. But how could I bring my now overweight and restlessly energetic dog to a tiny New York apartment? My parents agreed to take care of her. In fact, they had grown so attached to Pepper that they had their own aspirations for her. My mom enjoyed going on long morning walks with her, and my dad had plotted an evil plan to get back at the groundhog that he was convinced had a lifelong vendetta against him and his garden.

But guilt still ensued. How could I have abandoned a dog that has been abandoned? I was finally back in New York making money, but I felt like I had pawned off something important to me. Further more, I could no longer give Pepper the opportunity to catch a squirrel, which had been a personal goal of mine since I created the bucket list. My dad would send me messages about how Pepper had adapted life in the country. Together, they flushed down a deer one day, sought revenge on wild turkeys the next, and I heard all about it.

A few months ago, while my dad was training Pepper to scare away the groundhog, she had cornered a wild rabbit that was 4 times the size of a squirrel, broke it's neck, and presented it to my dad as a present. This picture was texted to me during my lunch break at work.

Pepper found her catch, and from what I heard, she has been smiling ever since.
CHECK!

Jasmin’s Summer Wish

[Title]
Jasmin's Summer Wish

For Jasmin who turned on the heater in Jamaica

Jasmin was a kid like you, who lived in New York City.
She loved warm weather oh so much that summers made her giddy.
But one hot day, the hottest day, there reached a record high.
A temperature of 102 was too hot to deny.

Jasmin still would skip along and when some expressed disdain.
She’d smile and say in a laid back way, “It’s summer, don’t complain.
I’ve waited all year for the summer to come,
and it breaks my heart that you wish we were numbed
by snow or slush, by cold or rain,
Why would you wish for yourselves this pain?”

She had made her point. She could have left, but still she turned around.
“In fact,” she said with a cheery head, “I wish it was summer all year-round.”
Suddenly, the sun did something no one could foresee
The thermostat crept up from 102 to 103.

A heat wave struck the city hard, and many dreamed of days,
When rain would force them inside to play board games while they graze.
“Jasmin!” They said.
“Don’t you wish the heat would fizzle,
or for raindrops, a sprinkling, a flurry, a drizzle?”

But Jasmin shook her head and said, “Summer should be forever.
To deny ourselves of sunny skies would simply not be clever.
And I truly doubt you want weather that causes such a bummer.
For you must admit the only time you wish for cold is summer.”

From Indian summers to African winters— the heat wave lasted years,
And naturally, the city changed. To all but Jasmin, was it clear.
It finally came to her during a game of hide and seek,
When her friends sought refuge in the frozen food aisle for a week.

A gasping realization came to her and made her say,
“The NYC I loved is now a boring place to play.”
Over air-conditioned spaces,
empty parks and playground places,
no more relay running races,
Endless frowning flower faces.

Confused by this, she wandered into Central Park to ponder,
And remembered all the seasonal events she once was fond of.
They used to freeze this dried-up pond: a place that she could ice skate on,
And where she jumped in piles of autumn leaves is now a grassless lawn.

As she walked past cacti gardens, little Jasmin pieced together,
How the city is affected by these changes to the weather,
And most of all she understood that growing plants need rain,
And also cold ‘cause everything must die to grow again.

Jasmin closed her eyes and wished for seasons to return—
for snowfall, frost and chilliness, her lesson had been learned.
And just like that, the clouds rolled in and blew an autumn breeze.
Winter coats went back on sale so people wouldn’t freeze.

Jasmin was so happy to have seasons as before,
Still, when the summer months arrived, she smiled slightly more.

Liz's Mix Volume 9: Discoveries from 2011

One of my favorite holiday traditions began about 7 years ago when my friend from high school moved to England. At the time, I was in Philly being completely inundated with the indie music scene. We both shared a love for music and would make each other a mixed CD of music we had discovered while on either our travels in Europe or the warehouses of North Philly. Despite the later opportunities to easily shoot a you-tube link over in mid-discovery, we continued to send each other a tangible CD every year around the holidays. We have similar taste in music, so receiving each other's album gathered over the course of a year is like reliving that magic moment of discovery in one sitting. Tonight, I don't feel like writing the novel, and this kid in the cafe is sharing an awe-inspiring iTunes library (thanks "killer hip hop" from Earthmatters Cafe), so I've decided to put together my music discoveries of 2011. I have to admit, this year I'm playing catch up, as many of these songs are from a few years ago, but they each tell a story. I'm not going to tell it. The beauty of music is that I get to write less.

The List:
1. Never Give Up - Robin Thicke
2. Te Mando Flores - Fonseca
3. Vocal Chords - Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
4. Through the Roof - Gogol Bordello
5. Mi Primer Millon - Bacilos
6. Inevitable - Shakira
7. The Broads - Minotaur Shock
8. Hold You - Gyptian
9. Obsesion - Aventura
10. Best Thing I Never Had - Beyonce
11. No I/ Ain Ani - Fools of Prophecy
12. Vanished - Crystal Castles
13. Take off Your Cool - Outkast (feat. Norah Jones)
14. Brother John/ Iko Iko - The Neville Brothers
15. Lucha De Gigantes - Nacha Pop
16. Bring on the Wonder - Susan Enan
17. Eterna Soledad - Los Enanitos Verdes
18. Ciega, Sordomuda - Shakira
19. Lamento Boliviano - Los Enanitos Verdes

Thanks Pandora, indie flicks, primetime dramas, WERS and my obsession with learning Spanish through music lyrics.

Do Christians need the promise of an afterlife to be good people on earth?

Can’t I be a good person, not because I am expecting eternal life in return, but because I just want to be a good person? Sure I have my day-to-day struggles in my attempts to live like Christ. In a world where cutting in line and cheating to get ahead are the norm, I sometimes walk away questioning why I make things harder for myself through these honest yet hard choices. But the idea of “suffer now, go to heaven later” has never entered my mind. In fact, the more that I give blindly without expecting something in return, the better I feel, so much that knowing that I did something right, whether it benefited me or someone else is reason enough to continue doing it.

Now, how can I take this thought and relay it to those who challenge my belief in God and heaven? I want to tell them about how Christ lived and how contagious love can be when transferred blindly from one to another. I want to say, yes, I believe in God and an afterlife and I’m looking forward to it, but one’s decision to be kind to others on earth is irrelevant to whether or not I think I’m going to heaven, so not believing is no excuse to be dishonest or hateful toward anyone.

Be good, because you want that for the rest of the world. Be fair, because you want everyone to have a fair shot. And be honest, because you want to hear the truth. You might not get this completely in return, in fact, you won’t, but as many times as you give kindness, someone else will receive it.

Absent in blogging, present in the fictional world

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted something… I’m aware. But this month may be a little scarce, since I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel in the month of November, or at least 50K words of one. And if you register with www.nanowrimo.com, and track your word count through Google docs, you can enter the writing competition, which will select a winning novel after the month is over with cash and publication prizes in tow. I’m not officially enrolled in the competition, but I’m using this as a way to motivate myself to finish my existing novel. Through online forums and twitter (#nanowrimo is trending with vigor), I’ve found a great amount of support and camaraderie for my writing. I see it as though I’m running a marathon with several others, except I’ve already run 10 miles and I don’t have to cross the finish line at any particular time. So, while others are stressing about making their nightly word count, I can relax knowing that if I just open my word file once a day consecutively for a month, I’ll be doing more than I did last month. Of course, it would be nice to hit 50K well-written, edited words.

On top of this goal, I am eager to finish a new music review of Joe Lovano and Us Five, an amazing jazz ensemble featuring Esperanza Spalding on bass. It’s been a challenge translating my two-hours of a spellbound face into words that follow my review style, but should I find myself procrastinating from the above project, you just might see my more recent review.(http://www.joelovano.com/videos/detail/11/Us-Five)

Also on the radar is a review from the famed DJ duo Curry Smugglers, who have created the now necessary platform for up and coming artists with a South Asian influence. (www.currysmugglers.com)

BAMF creative lost their (our) first pitch which was a big let down, but we’re looking to win back the next one and blow them away with our badass ideas. The next campaign, due in January will have to completely take over.

See? I’m writing. A lot. And I have a job. Where I write more.

All Day I Dream Of You--DJ Lee Burridge Review

September 18, 2011

In a barren and industrial part of Brooklyn, outside of a concrete warehouse-turned shitty apartment building, thirty flamboyant hipsters and a bouncer stood in isolation. The heartbeat to house music steadily throbbed from the rooftop and echoed throughout the neighborhood, assuring those below that the ever-so pedestrian action of standing in line was only temporary. I had been in this line before, but I didn’t get in the last show. Now, with ticket in hand, I was guaranteed admission, at some point. The kid in front of me wore tattered jeans and a black silk jacket with a patch, which read “SILK JACKET” stitched on the breast pocket. He bent his knees and squirmed before turning around to talk to me.

“I have to piss. Can you hold my place in line for me?” After I assured him that his place in line was safe, he handed me two colorful pills. “So, you know I’ll be back.”

“That’s okay, I believe you,” I hastily blurted out as I handed him back his stash. He didn’t come back.

Before I knew it, we were fighting the 10-flight walk up to the rooftop. After a quick check-in, a fuzzy hippie branded each of us with an “All day I dream of you” stamp, and the line dispersed into the crowd. Bright orange cloth streamers and lanterns hovered effortlessly above the crowd. There were tents selling tacos and drinks on rooftop corners and plush couches with fluffy pillows.

In the center of it all were the high crowd, the nodding crowd, the dancing crowd, then the inner layers of the hypnotized crowd, who pressed as closely to the speakers as their ears would let them. Nestled deep in the seed of this energy, was the man responsible for it all, Lee Burridge. Unlike other DJs, who either remain behind the curtain or perched on a platform for those to admire, Lee was clearly responsible for this magic but put himself at eye level to identify with our emotions. It’s as if he depended on our energy to feed his fire of talent, and we didn’t disappoint.

I started at the outskirts of the high people and eased my way closer to the stage. Between the head nodders and the dancers stood a hybrid of sorts. This girl had her eyes closed and her mouth open and she swatted her arms at the air with every measure. My friend and I were completely spellbound by her. We watched every tone change sweep through her body and widen her smile.

“She doesn’t look high.”
“I think she’s just feeling the music.”
“Oh... can we do that?”
So, we decided to close our eyes and “feel the music” for about two minutes before checking in with each other afterward. About a minute later, we caught each other looking to see if the other one was bored yet.

The music was good, but I felt like we were watching everyone around us ride this exhilarating roller coaster, simultaneously experiencing the same bumps and loops with lofty expressions, but we had missed our chance to buckle in and were stuck holding everyone’s shit.

A new theme took over, and we were instantly drawn like mosquitoes to a bright light. The drumbeat echoed through me as the bass line established a strong foundation, and as Lee stacked one track over another, song samples mathematically strung together in perfection, my eyes closed and my jaw fell open.

Deeper into the song, I felt this powerful uplifting charge moving amongst the crowd. With the combination of Lee’s music and the crowd’s energy channeling through me, I felt pure freedom from everything I ever learned to know. I left this show with more than a new-found appreciation for house music. I now have further support that music is the reason why I live.

This show taught me a valuable lesson. House is not just a genre of music. You can’t judge it by downloading a 20-minute song and simply hearing. You need to be in a musty basement feeling the cold air wisp by, despite a tight sweaty crowd of blissful attention-deficit kids. You need to be on a rooftop watching jaded city girls close their eyes and let go. You need to be patient enough to saturate yourself with every feeling of animate being before you can honestly transgress to the next stage. You have been chosen to become the advanced listener. Don’t blow it.

Lee Burridge’s music is an intricate collection of whimsical stories powered by the energy of the crowd he entertains. Find a show and get your tickets early. This guy has some serious followers.

BAMF Creative

I've worked in the ad industry for a while and it's not the industry I thought I was going into when I was in college. I couldn't wait to be in an environment of endless stimulation, surrounded by these incredibly creative people that continued to blow me away with new ideas.

I've worked at large holding companies, small start-ups, and conflict shops, and it's all the same...

Each project is full of too many chefs with the least creative people in the world making the most important decisions, beating good ideas down so hard that they have lost their vigor and meaning by the time the project is out the door.

You don't have to be in an agency to know what I'm talking about. The media is all about stimulation, but they have continued to throw shock without meaning so many times that they have desensitized the most horrific moments and appalling language (ahem MTV). Talented musicians are selling their sounds one hook at a time, only to be rehearsed to the point of exhaustion. Nothing is fresh anymore.

I feel like the media is trying so desperately to get our attention that they are constantly fighting to shock us. If they were to paint a picture, they would want to throw out all these bright colors at us, but because all these non-creative types get a hand in it, they unknowingly mix all the colors together, and instead of painting this beautiful piece of art that they pay so much money to market, they instead create that nasty purple/brown mud color that can only come from cheap generic paint. For all of you who weren't design majors,, see below for clarity.

If I had my own ad agency, this is what it would be like...

-We would only hire people who have their own side projects that we believe in (real creatives believe in themselves other than their ability to write about Ritz crackers and Cialis.)

-Our clients seek us out to come up with that one amazing marketing tactic that works better than waning drawn out campaigns that cost the same and don't work.

-This is a new age: people don't pay attention to long drawn out campaigns (unless it's 5 commercials strung together during the Superbowl), they say "Remember the time when Kayne interrupted Taylor Swift a day after his clothing line, Pastelle, failed...oh you don't remember that second part? It's called good PR.

-If a client offers us tons of money to do something boring or stupid, we wouldn't do it (maybe we'd have a list of non-clients on our site titled, "People who asked us to do something stupid or boring")

-We would work on standard media like print, digital and social media campaigns, but we would also offer other services like guerilla marketing tactics, psychosocial marketing tactics and creating new media platforms that blow their fucking minds away

-No pharmaceutical advertising (too many rules)

So, we're starting it right now: one account director, one copywriter and one art director. The plan is to continue business as usual at our real jobs but work on these two pitches at night. That's right, two pitches. Two companies. We rock. We're called BAMF creative. Follow us on twitter. @BAMFcreative

Hot-blooded and Unabashed: A Band Review of Gazelle

Sunday night I arrived at the upstairs lounge at Pianos in the Lower East Side. A small place to house a powerful voice, I thought, as Pianos tends to host bands with a metallic flair that would require good sound diffusion to appreciate.

About to start were the acoustic duo, Gazelle. Armed with a short blue dress and some serious copper pipes, the lead singer, Zeena Koda stood in unapologetic confidence, ready to either blow us away or take us all out. With the ever-present resilience that could only stem out of Jersey City, she already told the audience and myself that we fucking suck at least twice before the show even began.

With a swift methodic kick of the amp below him, the bearded quieter half, Jason Urbanski, interwove the makeshift bass drum with his rarely amplified guitar into a whirling rhythmic motion that sent us all into a trance.

Koda’s smooth sultry voice opened us up to her world, and jaws dropped as her voice fluidly progressed into a powerhouse of endless capacity that drew consistent throughout. Deep into the show, it was clear that she could take us on an emotional high in an unyielding rasp that moves you like that of the Wilson sisters without the dramatic hook.

I followed the impressive oscillations, and though pitchy and raw at times, one particular melancholic tune at the end of the set convinced us all that a Gazelle show is a ride worth taking.

Self-described as a “beat laden slap in the face,” Gazelle has this impassioned sound that will push limits as far as an acoustic guitar can go. Just make sure you see them in a venue with enough room to support a powerful voice. It was difficult to find the sweet spot in the upstairs Pianos venue, and personally, I like to keep a safe distance from those of Jersey City.