The Tres Amigos on the Rodent Hour

I co-host a radio show. I'm not sure if I mentioned that before.

Oh, no, I totally mentioned it--but only once, and then never again. You wouldn't know from reading my blog (thanks everyone!) that I've been doing a weekly Internet radio show called The Rodent Hour for almost eight months now. Not to brag, but it's pretty sweet. Big Island Rachel, radio personality. I have to stay up so late for it! Sometimes I don't get to bed until after 11--on a school night, no less.

There's a pretty wide variety of music. We've had noise rock, hiphop, Afropunk, and just plain rock and/or roll. Most of the bands are based in the tristate area (I never knew what that term meant when I lived in Hawaii; the BF have to draw me a map of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut on a bar napkin and circle the tristate area for me), but over the summer we had some bands come through on tours from other places. The bands are kind enough to come into the studio and play a set live for us, and then my co-host feeds us all tacos from Tepango's Taqueria in Brooklyn. And oh, the laughter! The witty banter! The pithy comments! The pith runs so high on the Rodent Hour.

So high, friends.

You can listen to it, too! It's on the Internet, which means that anyone with an Internet connection and some speakers can tune in every Tuesday from 8 to 10PM Eastern Time to hear my meatspace voice and a lot of great music. For example, do you like the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? Do you like things that give you the opportunity to use words like "roots," "folk," or "Appalachia"? Do you use Mason jars as drinking glasses even though your family's never been on welfare and has proper cocktail glasses in the credenza? And you have a credenza? You'll love The Tres Amigos.

This is a slideshow of their Sept. 25th appearance on the Rodent Hour, set to their song "Fiddleheads." I defy you to listen to this song and not smile. That's a washboard and an accordion you're hearing. Feel the wholesome Americana rollicking from of those fine harmonious tenor voices! Listening to their set made me want to be a better person. They're that good. Plus they wear matching shirts! How adorable is that?

If you miss the show live, we usually post the whole two hours on a Soundcloud account and leave it up for a week or so, along with some studio-quality tracks of that week's guest. Our free account only allows us to have one show at a time up there, but you can download the songs and show as a podcast for free and have it on your computer to listen to it anytime you want. Last week's show isn't up right this second. What you CAN hear, though, is our show from the night we had Slam Donahue on, and yowzah, were we all on fire that night!

But wait--there's more!

We have a YouTube channel, a Tumblr, a Twitter account for livestreaming during the show so you can know what songs are playing, the Soundcloud account, a Facebook page, and even  a Stickam account that theoretically gives you live video of the band as they play, though we've never been able to get the sound to work on it and sometimes the video cuts out. The whole thing is pretty DIY, but that's hip right now, don't question me, I drink from a Mason jar with a handle on it, I live in Brooklyn!

Here's all the links. I'll be better about posting after each show and end each Rodent Hour post with the links.

youtube.com/rodenthour
rodenthour.tumblr.com
twitter.com/rodenthour
soundcloud.com/rodenthour
stickam.com/rodenthour
facebook.com/rodenthour

My big sister got married!

There's a tornado warning for New York City that I won't receive until we land and I see the text message from my company telling me to stay indoors cuz the wind is a'blowing. It will not surprise me in the least. The wings of the plane are shaking so hard that the nice Egyptian man next to me pries his arm from my death grip and lowers the shades.

"Now you can't look at them," he says soothingly. "Did you snorkel in Hawaii? Did you see any turtles?"

I don't like flying. Judging by most stand-up comedy I watch, I don't think anyone really likes to fly anymore, but it's especially shameful for me because I've been doing it since before I could walk, Hawaii being the most isolated land mass in the world and all. Every year, it gets worse and I get to forge new friendships with the strangers in the next seat sporting my sweaty palm prints on their wrists and thighs. Once, landing in a storm at LAX, a Mexican grandmother had to feed me crackers from her purse so I would let go of her hand.

This trip back to Hawaii, I met a location scout for Fox whose sister lives in Toronto, and an Egyptian customs officer on his way back to Cairo to help his mother emigrate to L.A. Nice folks. They knew to get me talking so I'd be distracted from my fear, so now the Canadian location scout knows that Red Hook beekeepers get blood-red honey due to the maraschino cherry factory nearby, and the customs officer knows that it's still currently illegal to eat sea turtles. Currently. Keep your soup recipes handy, their population numbers are looking good.

But you know who I didn't meet on the plane were my actual blood relatives sitting in the seats behind me on my LAX to Kona flight. We smiled at each other as we made our airplane nests (I finally got one of those dorky neck pillows that look like a toilet seat and they are AMAZING, get that judgy look off your face), shared a little squeal of glee when we got to exit from the back of the plane in Kona, and that was when I noticed that they were going to the same welcoming party as me. Get away from my family, strangers, I thought hard at them, and suddenly realized that they were my family, just folks I hadn't seen for a couple of decades, and a hearty laugh was enjoyed by all.

And then my sister got married. Like ya do.

No, before she got married, first there were four other parties, plus manicures, pedicures, spray tans, dress fittings, rehearsals I didn't pay attention to, fortune cookies with fortunes saying "Congratulations Abby and Christopher," an octopus mustache, paddleboarding, snorkeling, a barbecue, homeless people, feral cats, domesticated cats, feral chickens, domesticated chickens that pecked my toes when I tried to feed them, little paper fans with Chinese characters that said "double-happiness," "soup," "dumplings," and "bean curd" (we speculated, our grasp of Chinese is limited), and THEN my sister got married.

Then there was another party with heirloom earrings, a horse, stories about making heat shield tiles for the space shuttle (you have to account for weather and seagull poop), and old photographs of a bunch of Norwegian people who would have been stoically shocked to see their descendent getting married in a Zen Buddhist temple in Hawaii.

And then I came home and took an extra day off work, because weddings are HARD. I spilled my after-wedding brunch leftovers all over my floor and ate them anyway and it depressed me a bit because I don't like vacuuming and my super-long hair that I shed on everything got in my fried rice and turkey sausage.

On the plus side, my bridesmaid dress is going to pull double-duty this year as my costume for New York Comic-Con. I'm going as Classy 1950s Catwoman. 

Rockabilly Batman better watch his back.

Summer 2012 Wrap-up

Well, I had a couple good weeks of regular posting, and then dropped off again because I was either having a good time or working really hard. As it should be.

This year, I vacationed in Portland, Maine. It was the farthest north I've ever been in the U.S. As usual, I got a little nervous about leaving New York City, something I have to monitor closely so it doesn't turn into a full-blown mental illness, but once I got there I was fine. I didn't really do much, just wandered around, looked at old buildings and graveyards and the indigent, read a couple novels and several volumes of European erotica, took a little boat ride and a little train ride. You know, vacation stuff.

This dude knows.

The BF was staying up in Maine for the summer for an internship and he had an apartment on the Eastern Promenade. The beach was just a five-minute walk down the hill, so I spent a couple of mornings there, picking up seashells and putting them back down again. (The last time I brought home seashells I had to trash the lot because one of the shells was still inhabited when it went in my suitcase. Lessons were learned.) I did get in the water, but got right back out again, because that shit is COLD. Only little kids and muscular guys with military tattoos were in there with me, which should have been a clue that my delicate tropical constitution was unsuited to that locale.

Whales and soldiers only.

And like all New Yorkers, I spent the week thinking how nice it would be to live in Portland, where the air smells of pine trees and the sea, the groceries are cheaper than a Canal Street Guchi purse (that's how they're spelled), and I could get an apartment in a  restored pre-war mansion for less than I pay for my pocket-sized Rachel-den in Brooklyn. I could live on Peak's Island with my goats and sheepdogs and pottery wheels, and the children in their organic cotton t-shirts would spend their nights on the dock, listening to the fog-horns and cursing their mother for leaving New York and stranding them in the ass-end of nowhere.

Floor it! We can be in Times Square by dawn!

I made it back to Brooklyn just in time for classes to begin. I'm going to miss getting off work at 4PM every day. This year I did some new student orientation events. I even got to give a presentation, with PowerPoint and everything. The only way I could have been more official was if I'd worn covered shoes. Thirteen years of public school teachers couldn't make me do it, so what hope do the people who sign my paychecks have? Sandals and slippah forever!

First week of fall classes also means the florist comes with his van and sets up on the main lawn to sell little cacti and Beta fish to nervous freshmen. Deprived of a cat for too long, I got a little over-excited and purchased some plants for myself in order that I might smother them with affection and obsessive worrying over their health. The one on the right is an aralia, a low-light houseplant with pretty round leaves. The one on the left is a banyan tree bonsai, which reminded me too much of home to just let it go back in the van. I really hope I can keep that one alive, because it was heavy and my arms are still sore from carrying it home.

Good luck kitty in the aralia, Buddha in the bonsai.

Right now, I want to be out in the beautiful late summer breeze, but I'm desperately sick with a cough and a socially unacceptable amount of snot. Filthy students, getting me sick with their out-of-state germs and having sex with the curtains open. The office windows are only tinted on the outside, you fools! I can still see you!

Enjoy your Labor Day.

I didn't care for "The Dark Knight Rises"

Opinions seem to be split on "The Dark Knight Rises," the final installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman-opus.

Batopus?

Spoilers! I'd like to note that the ending of this movie was spoiled for me on opening day when I was reading my office's Facebook page and one of our students posted the ending because s/he is a massive asshat and can suck my freshly sharpened Batarang, thank you very much.

I've read a couple of reviews calling it a masterful, fitting end to a grand, sweeping trilogy, and other reviews calling it a sloppy, incoherent mess.

And I really, REALLY want to be in the fitting end camp. Batman! Catwoman! 'Splosions! IM-splosions! I loved it's predecessor, "The Dark Knight." It's one of my favorite movies of all time, and it's definitely the best superhero movie ever made. It blew everything else out of the water, the original "Batman," "X2," "Spider-Man," "The Incredibles," nothing else comes close to touching the depth and thematic resonance of "The Dark Knight."  

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe my expectations were just too high for the sequel, which isn't a bad movie, really. I liked the villain, I liked Catwoman, I liked John Blake, and the action scenes were cool. I was never bored, exactly, but neither was I sucked into the world, the characters, and their struggles. I had too many questions that were never answered, and I kept getting lured into a philosophical theme only to have that theme discarded for the next plot twist.

The twist is she's my best friend and lets me ride that Batcycle.

Here were my main problems: there was hardly any actual Batman or Batmanning (yes, it's a verb) in this Batman movie, Bruce Wayne was the least interesting person on-screen, I could drive a Bat-wing through the plot-holes, and there was no central theme to hold the whole thing together.

The last one is my biggest gripe. "The Dark Knight" introduced it's thesis early on. What separates heroes from villains? Every action sequence, every line of dialogue, and every character development served to expound on that thesis. Every part of that story worked to expand and explore the basic themes of heroism, evil, and the difference between the two.

The difference is just knives and pocket lint.

What is the theme in "The Dark Knight Rises"? Is it that the past always comes back to haunt you? Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne seem pretty haunted by the lies they told about Harvey Dent at the end of "The Dark Knight." Selina Kyle is wholly motivated by her quest to escape her past crimes and her past selves (she's complicated; I liked her a lot). Bane, too, uses his tragic childhood to fuel his quest for--well, that's one of the plot holes I mentioned earlier. Bane is a lot of fun to watch, but damned if I could figure out what he or Talia really wanted in the end.

Then the movie just sort of forgets that it wants to explore how the past binds and shapes us, and decides it's going to talk about hope instead. Bane doesn't want to kill Batman or destroy the city right now. He wants to give it a few months, long enough for people to get some hope that they'll be saved, and THEN he'll crush them. I think. Seriously, the villainous plots in this movie remind me of a Venture Bros. episode. "I dare you to make less sense!"

More plausible than this movie

So then maybe the movie is supposed to be about fear? About how fear of death is what makes you achieve great things? And you can't fall into despair and hope for death, because then you won't be able to jump really far, even thought there's CLEARLY a rope attached to the lip of that big well and you could just shimmy up the damn rope now that you've cured your eight-year-long limp and your broken back with some prison calisthenics. That plot point did not make a damn bit of sense. And this is coming from someone who read the comic this movie is based on, which had Bruce Wayne's doctor girlfriend curing his broken back with her psychic powers and was STILL more believable that whatever crazy shit went down in the third act of "The Dark Knight Rises."

Somehow still more plausible than this movie

All of these themes are rich fodder for a Batman story. The impact of the past on the present, the power of hope, the function of fear, all good stuff and all covered in the two earlier Nolan Bat-movies, which is why I understand how a lot of people can feel this movie is a fitting end to the trilogy. But "The Dark Knight Rises" never stuck with any of these themes long enough for me to get emotionally or intellectually invested.

I wouldn't have cared so much about themes if the story had been able to pick up the slack. "The Dark Knight Rises" had a very complicated story, and it's lack of thematic coherence made it impossible for that story to mean anything to me. The main reasons I saw "The Avengers" six times this summer (get that judgey look off your face) are because it was fun, funny, and had a simple story that was executed very well.

You make me feel less alone inside.

"The Dark Knight Rises" wasn't fun, it was depressing; it wasn't funny and could barely stir itself to be witty (again, Catwoman is the exception here. I liked her a lot, did I mention that? She brought style, wit, and pizazz to every scene she was in. They should have just made an Anne Hathaway Catwoman movie. I'd watch it twice); and the story left me empty inside. I felt a deeper emotional response to Bruce Banner having his first Hulk-out than I did to Bruce Wayne climbing out of the prison. Considering that the latter is supposed to be the hero's triumphant ascent from the abyss and the former is almost a throwaway scene in the middle of the second act, that's not a good sign. Bruce 1>Bruce 2. A new universal constant? I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens with the Batman reboot.

PS, they're already rebooting the Batman movie because they want to make a Justice League movie ala "The Avengers" and they need a version of Batman that can exist in a world with the Justice League. Nolan's Batman isn't suited for that. I fear that the studios will take the wrong lessons from the success of Nolan's franchise and give us a bunch of superhero movies that are dark, gritty, and completely lacking in maturity, emotional depth, or compelling storytelling. It's exactly what happened to comic books in the wake of "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight Returns."

This is what happened.

Cross your fingers, folks. The next few summers are going to be bumpy.

Lightning Strikes on Kane Street

Last week we had a storm, and folks, it was a doozy. A bolt of lightning struck the historic Christ Church on Kane Street and Clinton Avenue here in my neighborhood, and the falling debris killed some guy walking past. Harsh. The scaffolding that was up is all twisted, there's a huge gaping hole in the roof, and one of the stained glass windows is thrashed, as you can (kinda) see. The trees get in the way of really good disaster pictures, and I missed my chance to take close-ups before the city put wooden walls around the whole site and blocked it off to all cars and pedestrians. The whole street is going to be blocked off by construction for the next month or so while they repair the building.

It's weird to say this now, but I'm more scared of thunder than lightning. My first big summer storm in New York, when I was still living at 187, the thunder scared me so much I moved my mattress to the floor and slept there for the rest of my stay in that house. It never occurred to me to be scared of lightning. It's just light, right? I can feel Sir Isaac Newton shaking his fat little head at me. "Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter into their Composition?… The changing of Bodies into Light, and Light into Bodies, is very conformable to the Course of Nature, which seems delighted with Transmutations…" Somehow that quote relates to the development of the atomic bomb and means I should be way more scared of lightning than I actually am (probably; I don't pretend to understand Sir Isaac Newton, I just read that quote in a comic book once). Look what it did to this steeple!

Like I said. Harsh.

Birkenstocks

I got a pair of Birkenstocks. I'm at that point in my life.

Strangely enough, I got the idea from "The Devil Wears Prada," which I rented on Netflix a few weeks ago. If encouraging its viewers to go shopping was the movie's intention, it succeeded nicely, because "The Devil Wears Prada" inspired in me a deep want for clothes. Anna Hathaway just looked so pretty in her perfectly-fitted little jackets and skirts that cost thousands of dollars in real life but she got for free because she worked at a fashion magazine. But every time she was out of the office, walking around the streets of New York or Paris in those ridiculous shoes, my feet ached in sympathy. The soles were all too thin for the cobbles in her Lower East Side neighborhood, and the heels were not at all conducive to the amount of running around her boss made her do. There's studies that show the long-term damage feet and legs sustain from regular high heel-usage. I already wake up in the middle of the night from cramps in my feet and calves if I've done a lot of walking; there's no way my body could take a pair of stiletto Jimmy Choos.

But the want--the deep, gnawing WANT for new, pretty clothes! I must have STUFF! I stared at a lot of people's feet on the subway for the next couple of days, which is totally okay and not at all weird because in New York everyone looks at everyone else's shoes, and I determined that T-strap sandals are in this summer. And one of the fashion websites I joined, Rue La La, was having a sale on Birkenstocks, so there you go. T-strap Gizeh Birkenstock sandals for Big Island Rachel. They're so comfy. I regret nothing.

I know that a girl's Birkenstock phase is usually in college, when she's attending Take Back the Night rallies and only wearing clothes from No Sweat. But I grew up country. My only shoes in high school were rubber slippah and white tennis shoes all chewed up from hiking. When I went to college, I went from farmland to urban Honolulu, and my roommate was a SoCal fashionista who took me shopping every weekend. I wore heels and full makeup to class and was usually the best-dressed person at the poetry slam. Little silk scares, y'all.

Living in New York, I've almost started to regress. I never wear makeup, because the pollution makes my eyes tear up and it would dissolve into a soggy raccoon mess by lunchtime. I always wear my hair in a tight braid or a bun because I'm afraid of what's on the back of my subway seat. And I don't wear high heels. The last time I put on a pair of heels was for the Tom Sawyer ballet in Kansas City, and while I looked great and it was a lot of fun, it's just not going to happen for me in New York. I walk a mile on concrete sidewalks to get to work every morning, spend my day in an office with concrete floors, and walk another mile over concrete to get back home at night. I need a flat shoe with a thick, chunky sole that can absorb the shock of all that hard concrete. So, Birkenstocks. I just wore them for a week straight and my feet feel fantastic. Can Anne Hathaway say that?

Well, probably, because she's a movie star and can afford to have some peasant rub her feet with crushed pearls and shea butter every night. But I'm a union member and I don't believe in exploiting the working man. Birkenstocks, y'all. Birkenstocks.

Just stepped out for some smokes

And came back six months in honor of Bastille Day! Which also happens to be the day that the BF and I met back in 2007 in the Penn Station food court. We celebrate our anniversary on this day because it's easy to remember and all the French restaurants have dinner discounts. Big Island Rachel keeps it classy.

This year we went to a restaurant in my neighborhood that I've walked past every day for two years but have never actually entered. It's expensive and looks fancy, but it's always packed with people, many of them in jeans and slippers, so I always assumed that it must serve delicious and well-prepared but still user-friendly cuisine.

Instead, it turned out to be the art house movie equivalent of food: confusing and hard to swallow.  There was a goat cheese and yellow watermelon salad; hazelnuts in the fish; mint and purple wild rice in the grits; something called "Korean barbecue style brisket." I looked at the tower of food piled up on my plate like a church steeple and softly wailed, "What is this? I don't understand!"

And for all its weirdness, the food just felt, well, a bit old-fashioned. Strange combinations of disparate ingredients arranged in tower formation on huge plates--how fifteen years ago. This is Brooklyn, or nuBrooklyn as the BF likes to call it. We've got a sort of gourmet mac'n'cheese and locally sourced meat loaf thing going on right now. Dining in nuBrooklyn is all about the most basic post-war Americana cooking, just made with local, organic and artisanal everything instead of processed cheese-product and factory farmed beef.

On a related note, visit our newest sign of the end times, a store that in Prospect Heights that sells only artisanal mayonnaise. Finally.

Want to learn more about artisanal Brooklyn? Read this New York Magazine article on the Brooklyn food revolution, and pay special attention to the section at the end that talks about the Dominos Sugar Factory that's been in Brooklyn since the 1950s.