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So I've been pondering my odd bar experience last night, mainly for a way to classify what the fuck the bearded hipster's deal was. I told my mom about it and she explained, "He sounds like the Soup Nazi". That's it! I met the Cleveland Beer Nazi! Come one come all!! See the mysterious Beer Nazi! Let him enchant you with his sarcasm, but be wary of employing any sarcasm of your own, lest you be banned for life as I was!

I just had one of the most surreal experiences of my life. Yeah, I know that whenever a blogger starts a post this way it means you’re in for a self-indulgent account of some action that has no bearing on your life whatsoever. But I just had to share it, it’s too great.
So I’m in Cleveland, playing a concert with Citymusic, and so far it has been great. Coming out of the last exhausting week, I was hoping for a good experience and it’s proving to be really positive: I feel good about my playing, I’m staying with a nice family in a mansion, and the people in the orchestra are shockingly nice and down-to-earth. Of course, as I’ve come to realize with life, a dose of good vibes tends to leave you wide-open for some bad ones thrown your way.
So after a gourmet dinner at the house of the people who run Citymusic, I went with some friends down to one of the few bars in this part of town. I get there and it’s a cute little place called Wine Bar: great beer selection, one bearded hipster dude working. About 3 of us sit at a table and approach the beer fridge. So at this place, for bottled beer you grab one and wait for the guy to open it for you. I asked Bill to use his bottle opener and he was like, “no man, they’ll kick you out if they see you opening your own beer”. Yeah, that was my first hint that something was off about this place.
So Bearded Hipster (which is its own brand of hipster, really, it is so commonplace), comes and opens our beards with many a sassy, ironic comment. I remember being surprised by how snippy he was, it was kind of weird. Eventually many more people gradually joined our table and, having no money and only a card, I realized how annoying it would be to try and figure out the tab. Bill had some cash so I offered to buy him another beer at the bar if he would take care of mine at the table. This seemingly sensible solution would prove to be harbinger of doom for the future of Mafoo’s relationship with the Cleveland Heights Wine Bar.
Bill and I approached the counter and asked to buy two beers. Bearded Hipster explained that he couldn’t let me buy two beers at the bar since I had already bought one at the table. Essentially I was bound from the moment I sat at the table to only being on the mass bill at the table, by now up to about 13 people. So in a calm manner, if a might assertive, I tried to reason a way to make my plan work. Really the worst I got was suggesting that if I were to abandon my friends at the table and promise not to speak to them for the rest of the night, then would it be OK to pay separately.
Finally he said “Fine.” in a curt manner and rang me up, muttering to some fellow hipsters at the bar about how, if I didn’t come to the bar with this certain girl he was friends with that he would kick me out. I kind of thought he was kidding.
I got back to my table and about 5 minutes later he came to pick up some glasses or something and started talking to people around me about what a “douchebag” I was, and how everyone at the bar thought I was a total asshole. I attempted to talk calmly to him, but he was intent on expressing to everyone at the table how much of a complete bastard I am. He was actually pretty furious and was literally scowling at me in this middle-school fashion. He then informed the people at the table that I was no longer welcome at the bar and that I was not to be allowed back. I was just kind of confused, so I got up and left. I kept racking my brain about what I could have done to piss him off so much. I mean, I guess I was essentially telling him that his policy was bullshit but I was really just expressing my opinion. Is that enough to be banned for life from a bar? And all he really had to do was say, look dude this is our policy, take it or leave it. But I think the fact that he gave me what I wanted was what really sent him over the edge. Very odd. Bill later informed me that several people he knows have been banned from this bar for other similarly petty offenses. How the fuck do you stay in business by banning your customers for being disagreeable?
It’s kind of a drag because this wack-ass bar seems to be the main hang for the people in this orchestra. So I guess after each of the 6 concerts this week I’ll just hang out in Starbucks and revel in the glorious corporately-enforced manners of the dead-eyed baristas.

Wow, this really makes me feel like I’m living in the not-too-distant future. Deutsche Grammophon has a new online store, selling DRM-free, 320 bit-rate mp3s for $1.29! The top classical label has now entered the 21st century, something to which they have been slow as hell at adapting. I’ve already made about three impulse buys.

This album, I have lost two copies of and spent countless hours pining over. Now it’s mine again! If you are feeling particularly impulsive (as I tend to be in any given minute), check out the Zemlinsky Maeterlinck Lieder. Seriously fucking mind-blowing.

K, I don’t really watch/like sports, but these photos cracked me the hell up, holy crap.

Just study this pic for a while. All the different players in the drama, facial expressions, it’s like a renaissance painting:

I’ve read many articles and blogs on the best way to maintain a readable blog. The most common recommendations are:

Write about what you are passionate about.

Write about what you know.

Keep the blog focused on a certain topic or subject.

This last one is extremely common, highly recommended for bloggers wanting to hit a niche market. For some reason I just can’t seem to muster any interest into focusing my blog into one area of interest/expertise. I am the type of person who would announce that I am running the world’s first blog devoted entirely to sexual undertones in Christian children’s songs, then grow tired of it in about a month. Or I’d start a contemporary music blog and post sporadically, whenever the stress of being a contemporary musician didn’t get in the way.

The thing is, I am passionate about a whole bunch of things. I can speak on at least above-laman’s terms about many different topics and with expertise on a few. The most focus I can offer you is a concentrated exuberance about several topics.

Here are the subjects you will read about the most on this blog:

1. Politics and social issues – If you are a reader of this blog you are familiar with my high degree of cynicism toward those on the right and left end of the political spectrum. I live in New York City, so railing against the right, although it is an easy and worthy target, can often feel like you are preaching to the choir, shouting into an echo-chamber. Thus, often you might often find me valuing the criticism of the left over the right, because it isn’t often offered by people who also think the right is equally full of shit.

2. Movies – I am definitely an armchair film buff, specifically extreme cinema. I am not specifically interested in art house or foreign cinema – as in I won’t just go to the local indy theater and say, “lay one on me”. I love certain art house and foreign films, specifically Japanese, but I’ll usually seek it out because of the director. In the last few years I’ve began seeking out movies by director and it has changed how I view, and mentally catalog, films. Here are the most common directors you will find me writing about: Kubrick, Kurosawa, Miike, Tarantino, Cronenberg, Solondz, Scorcese, Lumet, Lynch, Miyazaki, Scott, Korine.

3. The Family Guy – It’s no secret I think FG is currently the best comedy on TV. I know there are plenty who disagree with me on this one, but I hold to it! It’s humor is a new type of intense irony and sarcasm that is only really understandable by members of my generation, we who were raised by our TVs, who learned to voice our praise and scorn using elaborate folds of sarcastic metaisms. Each episode of FG reaches new realms of absurdity, employing new methods of tedium, shock, and the macabre to achieve this. There are always jokes that fail in every episode, but that doesn’t make the successful jokes any less so. Btw, here is a description on Wikipedia of the plot of an upcoming episode:

Peter believes he’s a pirate; this episode will include a five-minute scene involving Peter trying to pick something up.

Hell yes.

4. TV – I am a fan of good TV in general. I do not think it necessarily rots your brain. It can, if you choose to watch mind-numbingly bad shows, pure and simple. There are shows that are smart and beautiful expressions of art. You just have to find them. My favorite shows, currently on, are Lost, The Family Guy, Battlestar Galactica, South Park, The Office, 30 Rock, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and The Wire.

5. Music – Yeah, under a very broad umbrella. I am a professional musician, so often this is my escape and you won’t find me writing too much about music. Of course, many things are too tempting to tell, so you’ll sometimes find me posting about: contemporary classical music; electronic music and technology; bands and acts I dig; shows I’ve played, seen, heard about, and/or want to attend.

6. Random Crap – Sometimes the stories I find on my Misc Blogs will prove too irresistible to repeat. That is why you will often find stories about musical roads, videos about wacky children’s shows, and gross food I secretly want to try.

I bought two bottles of Fergon iron. Am I going to indy-hell now?

“Brian Eno once famously remarked that the problem with computers is that there isn’t enough Africa in them. I kind of think that its the opposite: they’re bringing the ideals of Africa: after all, computers are about connectivity, shareware, a sense of global discussion about topics and issues, the relentless density of info overload, and above all the willingness to engage and discuss it all – that’s something you could find on any street corner in Africa.

I just wanted to highlight the point: Digital Africa is here, and has been here for a while. This isn’t “retro” – it’s about the future. “

Shut up DJ Spooky. Dropping an Eno reference and speaking with glitter-eyed optimism about the similarities between a continent and a tool, which computers still essentially are, don’t make you hip. That’s like saying ice cream and the Spanish language are similar. Let’s see if I can do this. Um, they both involve interesting usage of the tongue. They can both make you smile on a rainy day. Yeah, you get the idea. Go back to being adored by the ignorant experimental music elite for having a shred of insight into an area of music they know nothing about.

PS Shareware means you pay, btw, ie. try before you buy…

If you needed any more proof that the farther to the Christian Right you are, the more gay-obsessed you are, Andrew Sullivan found this on Conservapedia (the ridiculously biased Right-Wing version of Wikipedia):

Most viewed pages

1. Main Page‎ [1,906,753]
2. Homosexuality‎ [1,572,873]
3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [517,087]
4. Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [420,690]
5. Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [389,278]
6. Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [388,124]
7. Homosexuality and Domestic Violence‎ [365,972]
8. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [331,553]
9. Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [291,235]
10. Homosexuality and Syphilis‎ [265,322]

-via The Daily Dish

Only in Japan.

-via Presurfer

Hey, I’m back in town after a week or so of touring with AWS. Physically and mentally exhausted, but I had a good time. Audiences in DC and Virginia are weird, btw.

Here’s a few pics from the tour:

Late night Holiday Inn drinkin sessions-

My impromptu halloween costume, which consisted of a Sweeney Todd poster stapled to my shirt-

My new favorite drink: Clamato and Budweiser! (ok, it was really weird, but not as bad as you would think!)-

And last but not least, me smoking a cigarette from a fake bloody hand I stole from a comfort in in Maryland-

I’ll be back and bloggin’ this week.