A Combination of Things

New Job Redux

I got a request for an update on my new job. My update is that i no longer have that job. I am not going to say that i got screwed because the guy that fired me was too nice for me to get too upset about it but i will say that i was misled. I dont think its worth it to go into the exact details about what happened. I have put it behind me. My issue is that i quit my job at Gartner, which i hated but was a secured position, to work at Yale, took a pay cut and then got fired. So now i have no job. while i would like to feel really stoked about not working i feel anything but. I feel like i have hit a gross number of dead ends in my job search, I send out dozens of resumes everyday and fail to hear back on a lot of them. Is this customary practice in the business world? I have no idea. It seems like it might be. I almost had a job working at another Barnes and Noble but that fell through as well. I would love the opportunity to blame somebody else for this but because it isnt any single persons fault i will blame myself. One, for being hasty and two, for being unable to cope with the depression that would  wash over me every morning when i woke up and realized i had to go to work at Gartner. which sucked because i always looked forward to the moments that surrounded my daily decent into hell. I liked getting coffee every morning. I like listening to talk radio. When i got to work and  after fighting my way past the awkward nod hellos and mindless sports chatter with people i didnt really care to know I liked sitting down at my desk blowing on my coffee scrolling through the New York Times online, opening my email, when it was fantasy football season, checking on my league. I also liked going home. I liked packing up my gear as quietly as i could and slipping out like a ninja so i wouldnt have to say goodbye to anyone or exchange plans for the evening. it really made me happy not to care what people were planning on having for dinner or whether or not they would try to make it to the gym. So, i liked walking silently away from these major annoyances and getting into my car and blasting some tunes so loud that it disturbed anyone who might be having a conversation in the parking lot. These are things that i liked that made my working life remotely bearable for those 18 months. here is what i didnt like: being told what to do by someone who has no idea what to do, being the only person who is held accountable for anything, writing me up for being late even though i was never late because the other idiots in my department who were always late might get mad because they got written up and i didnt, being asked to do work other people were supposed to be doing but didnt feel like doing, having to come up with a new plan for lunch everyday, having my calls monitored by someone who doesnt know what he is supposed to be listening for thus negating the whole purpose of a call monitoring system, office wide birthday parties, birthday cards from executives i had never met, and the notion that Gartner isnt trying earn my love by feeding my for free once a week. Listen up corporate America. if you want to earn our loyalty and our respect this is what you do. Hire people that know what they are doing, fire people who dont know what they are doing. Stop being passive aggressive slobs when it comes to disciplining people and dont try to buy my love  like you by love from a toddler with company branded presents and free pizza. I am not a two years old. I am also not an idiot. I said before that i blame myself and i do. I wish i had handled everything better. and every other second of everyday that has gone by since i quit Gartner do i wish i could go back? yeah i do, because it was work and not working for someone like me, details details, is not ideal, especially when you have to pay rent and for food and gas. But i think i can land on my feet, or rather i know i can land on my feet. i think i will be ok and next time, if i get a job in a similar environment as Gartner i will try harder to stay positive. It doesnt feel like this post has an ending…

Tags: Yes sir no sir maybe sir sure sir

Album #5

Pacific Ocean Blue - Dennis Wilson So what if it just came out on Tuesday. Pacific Ocean Blue is not only the best solo Beach Boys record it stands toe to toe with Brian Wilson’s best Beach Boys material and fights it to a draw. You will never and have never heard a song like River Song in this or any life. What a tremendous release this is. I had been trying to buy cassette and vinyl copies of this off of ebay for years but have always come up short. The new two disc legacy edition makes me so glad that my first experience with this record is with some of the best remastered sound i have ever heard. Everything just jumps out of the speakers and  sounds like magic. I am only up to record #5 on my list but this is by far the oddest record you are going to see. I dont mean odd as in unlistenable but odd in that it makes me like boogie rock. Odd in that i takes these ballads that are almost vomit inducingly cliche and turns them into gut wrenching musical confessions. Odd in that it would sound even more odd if it were not so completely over the top. I was hoping when i saw that they were finally re-releasing this record after being out of print for 20 years that it would be as amazing as it is. I went in with as high expectations as i could make myself have and it does not in anyway disappoint. The second disc, his unfinished 2nd record titled Bambu, is even weirder than the first but it equally lovely and Taylor Hawkins, of the Foo Fighters, perfectly catches the essence of Dennis Wilson when he sings over the track Holy Man, a track which Dennis Wilson never got to sing vocals on before he died. I really cant say enough about this record except get it and live it. 

Tags: 15 Records, Pacific Ocean Blue

Twas Windmills & The Mucho Hysterico Tour

We performed three shows in a week and by the third show i hated all of our songs. As i type this i am humming some of our songs in my head to see if i like them and i dont really like them which is ironic because i wrote them. Is that irony? The difficulty i am having with this group is that i have no idea what our sound is supposed to be. It was easy with the Joiner Inners. It should all sound sort of like Guided by Voices or Superchunk or Pavement or Sebadoh or Chavez if we were feeling saucy. I dont know what this new stuff is supposed to sound like. I dont know what i want it to sound like. I really just want the songs to be good and i dont know if any but one of them are. there is a chance i am being to hard on myself and i can accept that. it just really bothers me that none of these songs are clubbing me in the throat with goodness the way the Buildup did and the way You and Yours and Combination of Things did. The old Three Way Duel stuff grew on me and i think all of the Joiner Inner stuff i great, even the stuff that is terrible i think it is all fantastic. I dont know about the Twas Windmills.  Oh and if anyone has not yet heard my sure fire cure for a pulled muscle in your back then here you go, you can give your thanks at a later date: 12-15 advil in a 3 hour period, 3 beers (I drank 2 Harpoon Summers and a Michelob but feel free to experiment with whatever you like), play an outdoor festival show and then wheel your amp back to your car two blocks away. Next day when you wake up, no more back pain.

Tags: The Joiner Inners, Three Way Duel, Twas Windmills

Tim Russert 1950-2008

Tim Russert died today of a heart attack. I was listening to Mike and The Mad Dog while i heard it. I am watching MSNBC now which is nice because he worked for NBC and there is a never ending flow of people available reflecting on what Tim Russert meant to them. Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams have almost lost it on several occassions talking about their friend. Sunday wont be the same without him.

Tags: Tim Russert

Twas Windmills Announce Mucho Hysterico Tour !!!

Saturday June 14, 2008
Rudy’s Bar
321 Elm Street, New Haven, CT
w/Sex & Death USA
21+, 3.00 cover….it is always worth it….
9:00pm
www. myspace. com/rudysnewhaven

Thursday June 19, 2008
Daniel Street
21 Daniel Street Milford, CT
w/ The Lonely H (WA), Sikamor Rooney, Tripstone, & Twas Windmills
$5 Cover
8:00pm SHARP!!!
www. myspace. com/localtakeover

Saturday June 21, 2008
Ideat Village @ Pitkin Plaza
747 Orange Street New Haven, CT (Next to Koffee on Orange)
FREE!!!
Show starts at 12 Noon but Twas Windmills goes on at 4pm
go to www. ideatvillage. org for full band list and more information on Ideat Village

A Combination of Things

This gas thing is starting to freak me out a little bit. Its not that I really mind all that much paying 4.30 for gas but its the way that it has been presented us. It feels like only one in a combination of shades that have been systematically lifted off of the way we had been living for several years. Yes there was a war in Iraq but it never effected us adversely, unless you had a loved one over there,  but for the most of us it never came that close to effecting us on any kind of personal level. But then the housing crisis came and the economy slowed down, and the government sent us $600 for free in the hopes that we wouldnt freak out when the gas prices hit 4 bucks and a lot of this was due to the amount of money that we have been ceaselessly pumping into the war. It seems like one thing after another after another is starting to go wrong or not wrong precisely but backwards. It isnt the end of the world but I am starting to see that at some point there will be one. Global warming and record amounts of tropical storms, hurricanes and floods. and on top of that we have to live with David Cook as our American Idol!!! Its all just starting to get to me i guess.-> The new Spiritualized album is pretty good, its a grower. The new Weezer album is very bad.-> I liked Indiana Jones 4 but Shia Lebouf was sort of a mistake and the scene where he swings on vines with a bunch of monkeys is perhaps the worst scene in the history of cinema.->Celtics in 6-> Im writing this on a Mac and for whatever reason it doesnt register when i make a new paragraph.-> I havent read a good book in a while any suggestions?-> and finally good work to the Democrats for finally getting their act together and picking a candidate however in my current state of mind I dont have very high hopes for November. I think America likes crazy people and John McCain might be the craziest. Imagine if he makes Mitt Romney his running mate? they would spend all of their time smiling insanely at each other reminiscing about what it was like when they both believed totally different things than they do now and comparing the taste of the Republican teet! 

Tags: No tags!

New Job

I got a new job so my last day at Gartner is tomorrow. My ultimate goal is to make sure no one but my boss knows that I am leaving and slip away quietly avoiding all of the annoying goodbyes from people that i dont even like. I cant even begin to imagine what any of them would write in a card. “Tom good luck at your new job. May your evil looks stay deliciously evil and may your sighs and groans of anger and dismay forever ring within the halls of this corporate rat trap. Keep in touch.” Maybe i will tell people. that card sounds hilarious. I will now be a manager at the Yale Bookstore. They are going to start me off managing the cafe, which is cool because i like coffee more than is probably healthy. Hopefully if a job in the actual bookstore opens up i will be primed to swoop in and take it. I suppose this is not my ideal job. One of the things is have learned while on this frantic I-need-to-get-out-of-Gartner-as-soon-as-humanly-possible-before-I-throw-my-company-issued-computer-out-the-window job search, is that i dont think i have a realistic ideal job. My ideal job is floating somewhere in the imaginary matter of my brain and thats cool i guess. However i know that i can be happy back working for the Barnes. If B Dalton hadnt closed i would still working there. I enjoy the atmosphere of a bookstore, how bookstores look and smell. It will be nice to experience that everyday instead of what i go through now which makes me want to vomit. I have never been able to adjust to Gartners line of work and the lifestyle that it tended to breed in people. I suppose its a character flaw and i am sorry for that but i just could never adjust. But things just got a little better today. I will let everyone know on Monday if things perhaps will start to get a lot better.

Tags: Barnes and Noble, i havent written in a while and the effort is making me, Yale

Elvis Costello and the Imposters - Momofuku

Expect a post in the very near future about why i havent been posting more often. Thanks for your patience. this came out today, or rather it came out two weeks ago on vinyl but was released on cd today for the “masses.” Under different circumstances i would call this record Elvis’s best record since his Burt Bacharach collaboration, Painted from Memory but because Elvis would like us all not to give a s#!t about this record I will only say that it is a all time album tainted by the most insanely pretentious marketing campaign in the history of music. I dont think anyone can argue that Elvis is one of the only relevant artists left from the era that birthed him. Some of these bands are still making records, some might be touring but they are not relevant. they are living trips down memory lane, tangible nostalgia but i repeat they are not relevant. Elvis on the other hand sits comfortably in the top 10 of the greatest song writers living, i actually think there might only be 10 great songwriters living and they are all in their 50s and 60s well except for Paul Westerberg but he doesnt really count anymore. So, instead of releasing this album with the fanfare and coverage that an album of this quality would usually get, he sneaks it onto the shelves of a few dozen record stores that still carry new vinyl and tells the press that he is looking for new an interesting ways to release his music. i dont see how releasing an album exclusively on vinyl two weeks before the cd release is either new or interesting. it is especially stupid because the story became the release process and not the album. Then to top it off on the eve of the cd release, Lost Highway, the label, or Elvis himself decided that again they would distract the press, reviewers and listeners with the preposterous notion that this record is in someway a collaborative effort with a long list of people that include Jenny Lewis from Rilo Kiley as well as the swiftness with which this album was created. “We wrote and recorded it in three weeks,” Elvis has been telling people making it seem that the album is in a kind of toss off an experiment in collaboration and nifty marketing. For the record no one but Elvis had any input into how these songs were written or recorded and if he is going to maintain that he did have help then i am going to assume that means he saying that Jenny Lewis and the rest of his so called “collaborators” have been secretly helping him make records since Blood and Chocolate. This is an Elvis Costello record through and through and it is a freaking great one. He mixes all of the best parts of all of his rock albums from Brutal Youth on, mashes them up into a sticky groovy paste and spread it all over this disc. every song here is fantastic in ways that Paul McCartney only wishes he could still accomplish. This album makes it clear that Elvis only songwriting peers are Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and Leonard Cohen. Throw Neil Young onto that list i you like, Neil hasnt made an album as great as Momofuku in 20 years but he still gives it everything hes got and his records are always interesting. Ive listened to this album twice already and im listening to it again as i write this and while i am in love with it i cant help feel angry and confused as to why Elvis would try to relieve himself of full credit for its creation and to portray this magnificent work as just a quickie meant to make a point about the music industry. i dont understand it. im all for trying different ways to get your music into the hands of the public but this is not the record to do that with. this needs to be forced down the throats of all the dumb asses that are listening to Daughtry and Maroon 5. This is song writing people. this is rock and roll. 

Tags: Elvis Costello

OneVoice - April 28, 2008

Earlier this week, I got caught between a pair of closing subway car doors. The doors immediately re-opened, so it wasn’t having the doors closed on me that was such a big issue. It was the reason why I got caught between the doors that ticked me off.The people who ride New York City’s L subway line between Union Square and Sixth Avenue have to be among the most inconsiderate in my little slice of the world. Now, when you ride the NYC subways virtually every workday, you will encounter all kinds of inconsiderate behavior - not making seats available for the elderly or for pregnant women, standing in the doorways on both sides of the car doors so that folks can neither exit nor enter the train easily, abusive language, physical violence. I once watched someone standing outside of the train reach inside the train like he was going to tap a friend on the shoulder, and instead grabbed onto one of the crossbars, and pulled himself onto the train, literally forcing people to move without so much as an “excuse me”.

The L train riders take inconsiderate to a whole new level. At Union Square, dozens of people exit the train from the door through which I want to enter. The last half dozen heading for the door appear to be wanting to exit the train, and instead they stop at the door’s threshold, positioning themselves as close to the door as possible so that they can be the first off the train at the next stop. Not only do those of us trying to enter the train extend the courtesy of waiting to board thinking these people are actually exiting, we are also then forced to push our way through these people to get onto the train before the doors close. This is exactly what I faced the other day when I wound up caught between the closing doors.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination when it comes to being considerate. I’m sure my computer bag takes up more space than necessary, and I’m the most impatient person when it comes to making sure I don’t miss my train home at night (if you don’t believe me, ask the person who stopped at the bottom of the stairs at Grand Central Wednesday night and blocked the path for everyone trying to get up the stairs.). At the same time, I know it takes very little effort to hold the door for someone, or make room for someone else to get on the train, or get the hell out of the way so that someone can get on or off the subway.

Perhaps they just all need a reminder of what being considerate means - either that, or I need to carry a big stick with me that I can use to push people out of my way. It wouldn’t be very considerate, but it would be effective.

Tags: OneVoice

The Dark Tower, PA, and anything else that i can think of

I am reading the Dark Tower again. I found the first 4 books in their audio versions at the library last week and paid whopping $7 for them all, the library’s suggested donation price. I had been wanting to read them again but i didnt want to read them again. so this is nice, i get to experience them in a new medium.

Hillary won last night. I cared so little about the outcome that I actually only watched a few minutes of coverage last night. Hurray, the democratic primary has officially moved from curiously long into the regions of the grotesque. Congratulations you two.

i havent been thinking very blog worthy thoughts. Maybe they are live journal worthy but this isnt a live journal so im not going to expose any one who actually reads this to the inner works of myself. You should be glad for that because my inner workings are boring and silly.

Keep on Chooglin’

Tags: Hillary Clinton, Stephen King, The Dark Tower