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Archives for January 2007

Acts of Terrorism Against My Fashion Regime

January 16, 2007 by krisis

Like most tragedies in life, today’s caught me completely unaware and unprepared.

For many years I have eschewed a heavy winter coat in favor of a layered winter ensemble consisting of perhaps a suit jacket, then a light warm-up jacket, then my trusty mod-squad brown leather jacket, topped with a scarf. It’s enough layers to keep me feeling insulated without the claustrophobic implications of a dowdy jacket.

This morning was cold enough to warrant the full layered ensemble, which I carefully arranged even as the clock crept towards making me late for work. The layers kept me from overheating as I nearly jogged from my house to the Orange Line, haplessly flinginging myself onto the second car as my lateness extended from seconds to minutes.

Fast forward past my triumphant entry to work sans five inches of curly hair and a highly efficient morning meeting. I sit down at my desk with a sigh and notice a smear of something on my right pant leg.

How in the world did I get this reddish paste – it looked like orange marmalade – on my dress pants? I carefully sloughed it away with a napkin, using a damp edge to pick up the remaining crumbs.

Must’ve bumped into someone’s bagel on the elevator, I thought.

I continued thinking that until I noticed more of the strange orange substance on the tail of my suit jacket, and all over the seat of my pants, and also strewn across the lower back panel of my treasured mod-squad jacket.

I wasn’t so worried about the jacket, which has suffered many indignities over the years, so much as I was concerned about the suit – my favorite one. Luckily, I had another suit waiting for me at the cleaners. I could walk to the cleaners, turn over my suit and leather jacket for cleaning, and come back wearing a clean suit.

Down the elevator I went, and across the street to the cleaners. When I arrived I helplessly flung my leather jacket onto the counter and breathlessly explained the problem.

“… and I know this jacket is a little beat up, but it’s my favorite, and I just want you to get this stuff off without it leaving a stain, and the same for my suit.”

The man behind the counter tilted his head and spoke to me in a slow, patronizing tone.

“Sir, I really can’t do anything for the coat now that you’ve let it wear through to the lining.”

Now, many of you have seen me digitally or physically wearing the mod-squad jacket, and though I might have let bits of it get slightly tatty, I’ve never literally worn it through. So, imagine my surprise when I looked down past his patronizing gesturing hand to discover that the strange orange marmalade was now encrusted around a quarter-sized hole in my jacket that – yes – showed through to the lining.

After a moment of consideration I decided that said hole definitely was not present when I examined my jacket in the office. The orange marmalade had eaten through my jacket.

How had my life gone from a typically busy morning of corporate communications to some oddball Jack Bauer subplot? What could I have possibly rubbed up against between my front door and my desk that would eat a hole through otherwise impervious 30-year-old leather?

Why was I still wearing a suit covered in the stuff?

I swiftly stripped down behind the cleaner’s changing curtain as they retrieved my on-hold suit, passing it into the booth in exchange for my soiled clothes. I came out of the store sans-coat, clutching my suit jacket closed with one arm and holding my mod-squad jacket (rejected by the cleaners) far away from my body with the other.

And that was all before lunch.

To the best that anyone has conjectured, at some point I leaned against some element of Septa that had recently been liberated-from or treated-for rust, and the mixture of the solvent involved and the leftover grit wound up pasted across my backside. Curiously, it didn’t seem to be harming my suit (nor my briefcase, which I noticed was slathered in the stuff hours later).

The upshot is that my beloved mod-squad jacket is now wrapped in airtight dry-cleaner’s plastic, probably on the way to an ignoble end in an industrial strength trash bag, and my best-fitting suit is at the cleaners being de-marmaladed (if such a thing is even possible) and I won’t know the outcome until the morning.

Frazzled, distraught, and facing a walk home in the cold without a jacket, at 5pm I decided that I could not let Septa’s passive act of terrorism against my fashionable layering cow me into inaction and dowdiness. I would fight back the only way I know how – with an ample credit limit and a trip to Kenneth Cole.

Now, if only I could figure out a way for this story to end with Septa picking up my K.C. credit card bill I could say I lived happily ever after with my new perfectly-fitted not-too-warm winter jacket (and accompanying splurge-shoes).

Filed Under: corporate, day in the life, fashion, stories, Year 07

The Belly of the Beast

January 15, 2007 by krisis

The closest I had ever been to a casino prior to Saturday was my twice-yearly reading of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, so when we stepped onto the floor of the Tropicana I half expected a neon carousel full of lizard-people to greet me.

It would have been better than the real thing; shabby carpets whose patterns snaked from side to side as they stretched across a hazy room filled with a fleet of leggy middle-aged waitresses in weird black corsets and hundreds of chain-smoking, hollow-looking gamblers, with a few cigar-smoking rotund gamblers thrown in for good measure.

I suppose I could have inferred the haze and the zombie-like patrons from Hunter, but i had been hoping for something more psychedelic.

In Vegas, maybe, but the nine of us were in Atlantic City. Wes and Karen sat down for winning streaks at black jack while I milled back and forth, nearly having my legs broken when i mistakenly wandered into the service-space between two active craps tables.

It occurred to me that there was really no instruction for the beginning gambler; I couldn’t have even sat down at a black jack table, let alone craps or some poker variant. While the hollow-cheeked undead of Atlantic City elbowed their way past me to get a closer look at the craps game I wondered if they all just expected me to buy some chips and lose until I understood … until I realized that anyone who spent any amount of time wondering about that wasn’t fit for gambling in the first place.

Eventually the more serious boys headed to poker while the rest of us made a pass at the slot machines, where I spent my first (and perhaps only) $3.25 on gambling before declaring that the fleet of corseted grandmothers were not going to keep me inebriated enough to make my gambling cost-effective.

We retreated towards the sports bar and, as the whir and hum of the shabby casino room faded behind us and as the ceiling gave way to rows of wicker fans and then impossibly-bright false-clouds, I thought that perhaps I liked casinos very much so long as I didn’t have to go into the casino part.

Either that, or calculate just how much I had to gamble in total to have my drinks and roomage completely comped and spend exactly that hour-by-hour over the slow course of a day. Because I’d rather spend my money on a steady and sure flow of Southern Comfort than whip it away on the whims of an eight-deck shuffler.

Eight hours later and we were all thoroughly drunk (some of us already hung-over) and mourning our poor Eagles while singing karaoke, me and Gina and our entire table screaming back the pitches of Bohemian Rhapsody at the pitch-deaf lump who had the (intentional) misfortune of selecting the song, and then carrying our scream-singing into the cool night air and back to Philadelphia as i sang the pitches i still could with my husk of a voice.

It took me the better part of Sunday to recover from the experience – just sleep and water, no speech or food, until finally this morning I felt as though the rest of me had returned from AC, where it had somehow become entangled in the hazy air on the casino floor.

Filed Under: adulthood, alchohol, books, day in the life, events, stories, Year 07 Tagged With: gina

Complementary Compliments

January 9, 2007 by krisis

If I’m having even the most decentest of days I tend to be very complimentary – especially to co-workers. For a little while in college I was sure I was meant to go into PR, because I love to spin people in a positive way.

(That was nixed, at least for the time being, because I don’t usually find products to be quite so spinnable.)

If a designer whips up a cool brochure in record time, or if one of my friends sings a song really well, or if someone just makes me happy, i don’t hesitate to let it be known – not only to the person, but to anyone else in earshot or who I see later that day.

What’s funny is that I don’t really think about the impact of my compliments – whether they brighten someone’s day or seem routine and vacuous – I just make them because people seem to deserve them. I am an indiscriminate complimenter.

Work today was as frenetic as ever, peaking in the seemingly impossible task of providing final sign-off on multiple 100+ page books that are due to mail in a week.

As I was leaving I bumped into a particularly beleaguered co-worker in the hall who had been proofreading the books all day, and said, “Last call for Peter. Speak now or hold your proofreading until the morning.” She laughed and said she was fine for the night.

“Are you sure,” i queried, “because I can stay if you need help.”

From the other side of the hall someone from another team chimed in. “Isn’t Peter great that way? He always offers to help, and he really means it, even if he’s on his way out. That’s pretty awesome.”

In the wake of that five seconds of honest, unsolicited compliment I felt as if someone just told me I got a promotion to CEO. I truly love my job, and I don’t offer to help people to get complimented or so I’ll be well-reviewed, but it was really nice to know that someone else appreciated it.

My dear reader, have you been offering praise where praise is due? If not, try it for a day or two. And, if you wind up making someone’s day as much as my co-worker made mine, leave a comment to tell me about it.

Filed Under: corporate, day in the life

2007 Song of the Day #4 – I Know It (Madonna)

January 4, 2007 by krisis

This whole Song of the Day insanity began percolating a few weeks ago as a highly covert Madonna Cover Songs project.

Madge isn’t really known for being widely covered, but as I acquired more and more of her sheet music books I discovered just how many of her tunes made for compelling, fun guitar-based cover songs.

Perhaps 2007’s CK theme would be recording every Madonna song? No – that would get boring after a while. I might love her, but I don’t always love her every day.

The idea was briefly shelved and speedily resuscitated (unwittingly) by Glenn Case, an internet songwriter (and Songfighter) who is endeavoring to list his 10,000 favorite songs one day at a time. He’s currently on day 114.

The Madonna Cover Songs project and Glenn’s project fought in my head like dogs in a cage, and out came Song of the Day.

The upshot is that a vast quantity of songs of the day are going to be Madonna songs. Including this one – “I Know It” – a never-repeated obscurity from her debut. (By the way, this isn’t the song I skipped yesterday – that’s still en route.)

If you know this one you are a true Madonna fan. If you want chords, performance notes, and lyrics for “I Know It,” keep reading. [Read more…] about 2007 Song of the Day #4 – I Know It (Madonna)

Filed Under: SongOfTheDay Tagged With: Madonna

2007 Song of the Day #3 – Tangled

January 3, 2007 by krisis

Today’s song was supposed to be another Madonna song.

It would come complete with a funny anecdote about how I didn’t think the chorus sounded right but couldn’t quite figure it out, and then I happened to be watching Madonna on YouTube, and she was playing it on guitar, and I was like, “Oh, look, Madonna’s playing the right chords,” and then I thought to myself:

Wow, how strange and vaguely post-modern that 24 years after it was originally released I’m figuring out how to play one of my favorite pop songs by watching a video of Madonna performing it on guitar streaming via the internet.

True story.

However, no matter how many times I tried to record the song in question I couldn’t make it to the end of a single take. It was struggling against being captured. Eventually my voice was too blown to try it anymore.

Shit, I thought, I only have an hour to choose and record another song.

As it turns out, I only needed four minutes and ten seconds, during which I recorded one of the most crystalline versions of any of my original songs ever. And, the song in question happens to be one of my favorites, which I have never before successfully recorded in hi-fi through my mixer.

The Madonna song can wait – Tangled is clearly the song of the day.

Filed Under: SongOfTheDay, Year 07 Tagged With: Madonna

2007 Song of the Day #2 – Supervixen (Garbage)

January 2, 2007 by krisis

If there’s an album I have hopes of covering fully by the end of the year (by someone other than Madonna) it’s definitely Garbage’s debut, so the the first song on it seemed like a good place to start.

“Supervixen” is by far my favorite song by my favorite band, which might give the impression that it’s my favorite song of all time, but not quite.

It’s one of those songs I play a hundred times a year but never quite nail when recording. Tonight’s isn’t perfect, but I think any song this loosely translated from the original will always have an air of the unexpected surrounding it.

(It’s also one of those songs whose title has only a implied relationship with its lyrics, something I do with my own songs more often than I intend.)

It took me a long (long) time to figure out a way to emulate the crazy multi-layered intro on one acoustic guitar. Tonight i was having trouble counting myself into it, so i skip the first pass at it altogether. This gives the song a much more ponderous start rather than the usual guns-blazing approach, which was fine by me, since I don’t know if my vocals were up to “blazing” tonight.

Incidentally, my extra vocals on the bridge and at the end of the last chorus were originally ad-libbed during Blogathon 2002, and ever since then I’ve done it that way every time.

If you want chords, performance notes, and lyrics for “Supervixen,” read below… [Read more…] about 2007 Song of the Day #2 – Supervixen (Garbage)

Filed Under: SongOfTheDay Tagged With: Garbage

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