New Blog Address/Name

http://thenextbiggig.blogspot.com/


I originally meant to title this blog "The Next Big Gig", but I created it really late at night and I mistyped it.

So now, I've made official the release of the correctly title blog "The Next Big Gig". All the entries you found here have been copied to the new site.

My aim is to post at least 5 days a week and I'll make a status update every time I do.

Sorry for the change and enjoy.


David

Rockmoto Blog #7 - "Day 1"

February 28, 2009

After a leisurely morning making (and eating) popovers, I began running around town looking for some new boots. I was confident they’d have something good for me at a nearby Big 5, but they had almost no selection in my size and the ones they had, didn’t fit my foot well. I race to Target where I score some water and gatorade, but strike out again on the boots. I don’t know what to do and time is ticking down.

I’m taking an afternoon/evening class because it’s the only one they had space in, but we still have to be there at 3:30pm for Jess to set up. We also have to walk the dog and time just keeps slipping away as I make PB&J sandwiches for our nourishment during the breaks. It’s a very first day of school vibe - to the point where as I stuff the sandwiches into little baggies, suddenly I feel like a someone’s mom. Weird. We head out, but we’re really running late. Tension rises and eventually we give up on getting boots as well as a long and pretty walk for the dog. Jess seems mad at me for poor time management and I don’t know how to make things better.

This is not a good way to begin.

We get to the VA where the course is taught and we walk her dog Memphis for 20 minutes. Then Jess starts the set up while I continue to walk Memphis.

Eventually, I come over, pull on my cowboy boots and strut over to the container where everyone’s meeting. They keep the bikes and all the gear in an actual 12’x50’ steel shipping container. Jess and Amanda are checking people in, looking official, wearing their bright red “RIDER COACH” shirts. She told me they changed the course format about 5 years ago and shifted the nomenclature from “instructor” to “coach”. ‘Instructors’ were too scary it seems. It was intimidating enough for most people just to be getting on a bike for the first time. ‘Coach’ seemed more like they were helping you, but I still think it sounds like it’s someone who’s looking to cut you from the team.

We’re instructed to get a pair of gloves, helmet and bandana. While everyone else has to grab garden-style ‘work gloves’ they supplied, I felt pretty nifty with my new mitts. I grab a bandana whose purpose is to save your head from grinding into the grease of the last few hundred people who wore that helmet. In fact, the Westside Motorcycle Academy is so popular, they have 1 course during the week and 3 courses every weekend – meaning the first group starts at 6AM, the next at 11AM and we’re at 4pm. This means that helmet’s been on someone’s head for the last 10 hours, not to mention the hundreds of people before them the last 3 years. Despite that, the helmets don’t smell at all. They seem surprisingly fresh. I grab a bandana anyway and when I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror. I think I look like Aaron Eckhart’s Harley-riding boyfriend character from “Erin Brokovitch”. Somehow the relationship seems oddly parallel even though in the movie HE rides and she doesn’t.

Jessica and Amanda call us over for a quick talk. Seeing my girl strut out there in her riding boots, high-end Kushatani racing pants, aviator glasses and clipboard was impressive. She looked more like a NASA flight instructor for astronauts-in-training than an Earth-bound bike coach.

Soon enough, we head over to the bikes. The first exercise is a dry run. We just gear up, sit on the bike and practice all the controls so your hands and feet get to know where everything is.

The magic happens when I put on the helmet. My first experience wearing a helmet was little league. I was just six and played catcher with my dad’s old mitt. It was a dark chocolate leather that smelled like old time baseball. It had a small pocket unlike the newer 1976 mitts at the time. We had to restring that webbing to keep it together, but it was a solid glove. I remember gearing up like I was a knight going into battle. Shin/knee guards, padded chest, and helmet with facemask. The mask smelled like piss and sweat and was far too big for my little face, but it’s extraordinary how having all that protection increases one’s courage. You feel a little invulnerable. “Go ahead throw a speeding ball at my head. It’ll bounce off and I’ll stand right back up.” (Unlike the time I was walking by another team’s practice and some schmuck misses a throw and I catch it right in the eye. I’ve got a seriously colorful shiner for my 2nd grade class photo.)

Like Proust’s madeleine, the helmet has sent me back in time in an instant. I recover, but I’m feeling invincible, nostalgic and fresh. Not a bad combo. Now to get present.

I saddle up on the bike and the sheer physicality sitting on it is remarkable. It’s like riding a horse but more solid. A horse is unpredictable, which is part of why it’s so amazing when you have a beautiful rider and horse perfectly in synch. But a bike? It’s all up to you. It won’t help or hurt you. It just is. And that means it’s all on you to know your machine, know your road and know your abilities - or lack thereof.

It’s such a power position. Legs spread wide across your beast. Feet on the ground – engaged because they have to be in order to balance the bike once the kick-stand is up. Hands up and out in front of you - clutch lever on the left and the throttle on the right. Suddenly, I wonder what the women in the class are feeling. The position is hardly ladylike. Do they feel excitement? Violation? Terror at being given that power? Or is it no different for them as it is for me?

I tell myself these are gendered assumptions, but only 10% of riders are women so there’s got to be a reason or three for that. Our group? 11 people total. 7 men. 4 women. 1 Black. 1 Latino and 1 female Asian. We have two couples including Ali and Jack from the classroom on Monday.

I’m assigned to my bike - a Blue 1992 Honda Nighthawk. It’s a little small for me and I was hoping for one of the Kawasaki Ninja’s – sounds cooler and it’s got a tachometer and body work that makes it look like a real sport bike, even though I think they’re all 250cc bikes (a third of the power of what Jess rides), but I just take what I’m given.

It doesn’t much matter as we’re never going above 18mph and we’re in 2nd gear almost the entire two days. So it’s not like this is about speed. I get comfortable. And it’s the day that speeds away.

An Open Letter to Maestro Conlon, Art. Director Domingo, Angel-Patron Broad: RE the $32 million dollar travesty aka The LA Opera Ring Cycle

Last night's “Das Rheingold” was a miserable travesty.

If the following review seems unnecessarily harsh, it has a purpose. It's designed to save the planned full Ring cycle next year. And it's an open letter and a plea. Here's it is:


Maestro Conlon, Artistic Director Domingo, Angel-Patron Broad:

Please find a Loge of your own and weasel your way out of the contract you have with Achim Freyer.

Don't let him design, build and stage the entire ring cycle next year. Instead:

1) Be a Wotan and steal Robert LePage's design and staging for his future MET production.
2) If that's not ready or Mr. Gelb won't lend it out, get John Conklin's stunning, simple and powerful design from Chicago and restage it.
3) Even better, get former GAle/GAtes director/designer Michael Counts to work his magic at re-imagining this behemoth. He can do it quick and for a tenth of your $32 million dollar budget. He’ll wow your audiences with visions worthy of Wagner’s score.
4) If you can't do that, borrow the Met's nearly silly, old "classic" 1986 Otto Schenk design. Even that creaky production would be better than Freyer’s nonsense.
5) And if all else fails, just do it as a staged reading.

Why? Because I can't think of anything worse than the avant-summerstock garbage I saw onstage last night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. If you allow this production to continue as planned you are going to turn off the entire city of Los Angeles to Wagner for the next decade if not longer (for reasons other than Wagner’s doing).

Please don’t do this.

Why? First because Maestro Conlon did a fine job with the orchestra. And his work (and the singers) should not be diminished or destroyed by the offensive staging.

In addition, Wagner was the most influential European artist of the 19th century and we in an artistic metropolis such as Los Angeles have an obligation to mount and should have the pleasure of experiencing his greatest work in the most potent manner in order to continue the conversation.

The production as is won’t allow us to see, hear or feel this seminal work.

As I left the theatre, a guy behind me said to his friend, "I don't know about all these avant-garde productions they always seem to do." The problem is not that it’s avant-garde. It isn’t. It’s just bad. People won’t know the difference and they’ll think they don’t like avant-garde or/and they hate Wagner. Don’t let this happen.

Get a Loge and get to work.

Sincerely,


David Rodwin

"Das Rheingold" Opera Review

And now a little review:

The good news:

First, Das Rheingold is not a relic. It’s a living, relevant story with some of the greatest orchestrations in opera to date.

Here’s why the story is as important today as it was when it premiered 150 years ago.

The whole thing is about greed. More than that, it’s about people who paid for a house they couldn’t afford and when the bank comes to collect, they steal money from the little guy to pay off their mortgage and save their family, but the means to their end starts the beginning of the end of their time as leaders of the world.

Sound familiar!!!??? I mean rarely has Das Rheingold been as relevant as it is today. What would be radical as a design for this opera would be to dress the Rheinmadens as a big sexy TV commercial, the giants as Bank mortgage lenders, the Gods as middle class Americans in over their heads and Alberich as a regular Joe turned self-made millionaire.

Instead, we get almost indescribable crap layered on crap.

But again, the good news is the story IS relevant.


Second. More good news. We’re in good hands with Maestro Conlon. The score is a bitch and Conlon’s up for the task. For starters, keeping the horns together in the overture is no easy feat and can easily turn to mud, but he kept a pulsing translucence evoking the Rheine quite well (despite the first horn’s two flubs in the first minute) True, the Rheinmaden’s were poorly balanced in the opening scene, but I partially blame the design. More on that soon.

A few transitions were less than crisp and I personally prefer faster tempi as we go from the Niebelungen depths to the God's perch just outside of Valhalla and back again, but generally Conlon did an admirable job over the 2:45 non-stop marathon.

Other musical highlights include Morris Robinson giving a robust showing as the giant Fasolt, Gordon Hawkins lending a strong vocal performance as Alberich and Arnold Bezuyen breathing a bit of life into the production as Loge.

Arnold got the biggest round of applause, because Loge was one of the only characters neither immobilized by his costume, nor covered by a mask. He still had to give face through caked on make-up that was a poor second to the Joker’s brilliant design in The Dark Knight. He also had to maneuver around two addition unexplained arms dangling from his body making him vaguely resemble a standing lobster with old fashioned devil ears. I mean, WHY? WHY for Godssakes? But he provided a bit of life in this otherwise passionless staging.

And now we’re already into the design horrors. So here we go:

Why was the direction and design so bad?

1) Random shit.

1. There’s a 3-foot wide multi-colored eyeball Down Right. It glows for a moment during the overture, but is never used again, though it sits there for 3 hours. Sure, Wotan lost an eye to gain his wife years back, but that’s no prescription to build a briefly glowing giant eyeball into your show.
2. There are two poorly drawn cut outs of black and white fish downstage on both sides of the stage. On stage left it poorly and partially conceals the constant efforts of what I can only assume is the solid associate conductor Grant Gershon trying to keep all the singers in line with the orchestra which is not visible to most of the onstage performers.
3. An airplane hangs over the stage the entire evening and finally moves a few feet to symbolize the passage of the gods to Valhalla in the last minute of the opera. WHY?
4. When Alberich places his curse on the ring he is suddenly surrounded by 5 creatures who circle him. One is an 8 foot tall limping white mutant dog with red spots, three were unidentifiable, and the last was a white woman with two globes for breasts the size of her head. They prance about him during the curse and once he’s done singing, the white woman beckons him over and he fondles her breasts as they wander upstage and are lowered under the stage. Sure, that’s what I do right after I make any big curse, I fondle the spherical hooters of an alabaster mutant chick in front of the gods I just cursed. Makes perfect sense.

2) The scrim.

There's a scrim down the entire production separating the audience from the performers. This not only inhibits sound, but it's design intent was to provide a foreground of pointless, abstract, video masturbation neither pleasurable on its own aesthetic merits, not having anything to do with the opera thematically or the rest of the structure of the design in any capacity. The neon lines a thoughtless rip-off from Robert Wilson, the two-toned haze or reds and blues at first mistaken for the presence of the river Rheine, then more clearly seen as the twitching of an artist who has no idea what to do with the video after he’s committed to keeping the screen down the whole damn show. First, hire a real video artist if you don’t know what you’re doing. Second, if you think you know what you’re doing, listen up, “YOU’RE INCOMPETANT. STOP. JUST STOP NOW.” Got it? Lastly, If you’re going to separate your audience from your performers for a non-amplified opera, you better have a damn good reason – like you’re letting the audience see the artist paint an enormous version of “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”. Oh, and did I mention that was only for two fantastic scenes and they had mics.

3) The costumes.

1. Half the performers had full masks shielding us not only from the singer’s facial expressions, but worse, from their voices as well.
2. The other half of the costumes were so large, the singers couldn’t walk one step in them. This immobilized (ironically) the oh so powerful Gods. Freyer’s fix was to have dancer doubles pop out from behind the giant structures the singers stood in. The dancer doubles would then move around one another an ambiguous dumb show clarifying and amplifying nothing but confusion amongst the audience.
3. The actual design looked like it was constructed by a group of remedial high school students. They looked like poor executions of hastily sketched drafts. The imagery neither captured a childlike exuberance, nor an unrefined “outsider art” quality. It just looked sloppy and poorly conceived. Worse, I’m sure this was intentional. Instead of looking like $32 million dollars, it looked liked third-rate summer stock.

4) The Set

1. Compare for a moment John Conklin’s spare blood red moon I his Chicago “Siegfried” to the raked 2-D globe covered with random letters, numbers and unintentionally tangled ropes and you know your high school could have done something better. Better yet compare Conklin’s Fafner dragon to Freyer’s transformation of Alberich into a dragon in this production. Freyer’s just looked silly while Conklin’s appropriate of Bunraku puppetry on a grand scale was majestic, frightening, powerful, evocative and beautiful.
2. As we listen to the grand transitions between heaven and the Niebelung underworld, we had to watch as the gods pretend to pull twisted ropes to hoist the edge of the stage up. Ooh. Aah. How glorious.
3. Some of the masks were cool, but the lighting in Niebelung was so bad you couldn’t even see them.

And now, I’m just worn out. There were so many other ill-conceived bits of both design and direction there are too numerous to list. I’ll just give one to give you an idea of the idiocy on parade. Just before Mime’s first exit, he displays his joy at his brother’s capture by wagging his butt in the audience’s face and then skipping off stage. Ah, the dignity.

If you’re read this far and care at all about opera, please just take a moment and send a letter to Director Placido Domingo and beg LA Opera to change its course soon, or we’ll all be flying to NY to see Heppner and Voigt do LePage’s the Ring in a year, because there won’t be a Ring in LA worth seeing.

Rockmoto Blog #6 - "Telling Your Parents"

February 27, 2009

I told my parents this morning that I was taking the MSF course. Jess didn't tell her parents until she'd been riding her own bike for 6 months. Their response? A long pause, then, “Your father and I are going to have to call you back.”

Their apprehension has turned to pride over the years though, as she's turned a past-time into a thriving career - going from the back of a bike, to a rider, to an editor of a national motorcycle magazine, to a coach - in addition to her current position at the Motorcycle Industry Council.

When I told my mom I was doing the course, she thought it'd be a great, life-expanding experience for me.

My dad on the other hand gave an pained pause and sighed, “Oh, Dear…You know, your cousin Howard (Judy’s husband) showed up at their daughter’s bat mitzvah with his arm in a sling. He was wearing a helmet, but he still broke his arm. I just don’t know why people ride.”

Oh, dad. Thanks for the encouragement.

I’m not really that nervous about tomorrow, but I wasn’t able to get new boots yet. You’re required to wear something that covers your ankles and the only thing I have are some old used cowboy boots. They don’t recommend them as they don’t have much traction on the soles. But I tried Payless and they didn’t have anything that fit me. I’ll run out tomorrow and grab something quick and cheap. Real moto boots start at around $100 and I’m not ready to make that investment. They supply helmets and gloves, but Jess got me some hi-tech super cool riding gloves for me as a present. That was super sweet of her. She really wants me to enjoy the experience. They’re tight like ski boots are on your feet. I’m not sure if they’re supposed to be that tight, but they’re XL and I’m don’t know if they come in a larger size.

We were going to take a few minutes to sit on my roommate’s bike so I could familiarize myself with all the controls, but our time together is so limited we didn’t get a chance to do that.

I’ll be coming in tomorrow cold as can be. Hopefully, I’ll represent.

Rockmoto Blog #5 - "The Classroom"

We now return you to your previously scheduled programming. Rockmoto blog #5


February 24, 2009


Last night was the classroom part of the MSF certification course. Our teachers were Amanda and Erika who together founded the Westside Motorcycle Academy 3-1/2 years ago. I’d met Erika once socially and it was good to see a familiar face. As she took attendance she stumbled over my name, but when she saw me raise my hand, recognition hit her face and she called out “Oh! Hi. How are you?” People stared. Great. I’m no longer anonymous. I don’t want special treatment. I just want to get through this like any other person.

Not that everyone here’s a Harley rider who’d have stomped on my glasses in elementary school, but I’m guessing Teacher’s Pet status doesn’t get you very far in the moto world (Check me out writing “moto” instead of motorcycle. I have little idea if people really do that, but I’m either starting to fit in or I’m sounding like an idiot dilettante poser.)

I was distracted at the beginning of my classroom because I had to leave work early at my relatively new job. I didn’t have a chance to tell the boss in the morning because there was a crisis afoot and when I stepped out he wasn’t all that happy. I kept trying to shake the thought that I’d just jeopardized my job, but it was a serious distraction all night.

The class was in the community room of the Westside Pavilion on Pico. I didn’t know they HAD community rooms there. It was a little tricky to find – hidden behind the food court. I got to the parking lot 15 minutes early, as suggested, but I didn’t get into the classroom 'til 5 minutes before 4PM and almost every seat was taken. These people were serious about this. No one’s on time in LA and I was nearly late at 5 minutes early.

It was a diverse group, which is nice to see in LA. I’m not sure if I fit in, but it was so mixed, anyone might have felt the same way. There were folks from other countries. Black, White, Asian, Latino, male, female, the works. The composition felt much more diversified than any place I’ve ever worked. It was somewhere between an Obama campaign headquarters and The Forum. There was also a similar excitement and nervousness just like in those communities too.

It was a group of 72 people broken into tables of 7-8 and the first thing they had us do was introduce ourselves to our table and say why we were taking the class. Some people had been riding for a while, but wanted to get their license finally (after holding a permit and then failing the test at the DMV which is supposed to be a real bitch). Others had ridden on the back of a bike and were bit by the bug, so they were going the next step. There was one couple at our table (Jack and Ali) who decided to learn to ride together instead of taking dancing lessons. Very cute. And when it was my turn, I timidly slipped in that my girlfriend already rode, so I was just trying to catch up. To that an “I-work-out-ever-day-at-the-gym-so-I’m-gonna-wear-a-really-tight-T-shirt-to-go-with-my-trendy-stubly-beard” actor asked if I’d ridden on the back of the bike with her. Before I was able to mention her bike has no back seat, a Lebanese guy at the end of the table said, “You can’t ride bitch to your girl, man”.

And indeed I haven’t. But it’s a concern. Ever since Natalie Portman refused to “ride bitch” to Zach Braff in “Garden State”, ‘riding bitch’ has been a serious danger out there…for any man whose girlfriend rides.

I’m pretty darn secure with my masculinity, but I have to admit, dating a Moto coach has tested that. I happily admit to being a massage therapist, opera composer, and avid cook only because I’ve every confidence in my love for women. But when my girlfriend rides over 100mph and puts her knee down, and I can’t EVEN ride bitch to her, it does make me feel like less of a man. My roommate shakes his head at my inability to appreciate how wicked her skills are. So you’ll understand how I felt as we’re filling out forms, when Amanda, the other instructor, comes over to my table.

“Is Jessica’s boyfriend here?” (Dude, that’s like just being someone’s “wife’.) Oddly, the guy to my right says yes.
“David! Great to meet you.”
“I’m not David,” he says. Confusion abounds. Apparently his girlfriend’s name is Jessica as well. I pipe up.
“I’m David.”
“Oh. Great to meet you. Are you excited for this? I think I’m gonna be teaching with Jess this weekend. Have fun.”

She leaves. Everyone looks at me for a moment. My cover is blown. Bad enough my girlfriend rides. Now they know she’s the freakin’ teacher. “How’d she end up with a 4-wheeler like me?” That’s what I fear they’re all thinking. Luckily, no one comments on it further and it’s down to business.

The course is thorough, well presented and flies by. There are decent videos, question and answer sections to keep us awake and breaks every hour. We cover everything from proper turning strategy to the greatest cause of accidents (alcohol, alcohol, alcohol)

Five hours later I take the written test. 50 questions. I need to answer 40 right. I’m terrified. I’ve taken so few tests in the last 15 years that my Princeton education seems irrelevant. I’m just out of practice. And I wasn’t listening as well as I could. I was marking up my notebook, cross-referencing which answer was on which page, to the point where I wasn’t really reading. I’d have done better if I’d just read the training book cover to cover. I’m so nervous I finish the test before anyone else hands theirs in, so I start going back over my answers figuring I must have done something wrong. It seemed deceptively simple, and I couldn’t take the risk to screw this up. So I went back over every question.

Perfect score. NO great accomplishment, but certainly a great relief. Next stop… Mounting my hog.

That came out all wrong. I have to stop talking like I’m in the lifestyle. Hmm. In fact, I think ‘The Lifestyle’ means something different altogether. I’ll just shut up and ride.

Purim Party-On

We interrupt this Rockmoto blogging series for a look back at my first drunken Purim. And when I say drunken I mean...


March, 1995.

There was a line to get into the house. I’d never been to a Chabad service before, but I heard they throw a great Purim party and I figured this would be an easy entry into the mysterious world of the Hassidim. The Chabad House was a little gray colonial a few blocks off the Northwestern campus in Evanston, IL and frankly it was a revelation to me there were Jews in the mid-west much less Hassids.

I’d grown up in a country club Conservative temple in Stamford, CT where Purim meant gathering in our large sanctuary where lay folk would take turns reading from the Megilah and then an English speaker would give an animated English translation. Parents would encourage their kids to stamp their feet and swing their cheap, plastic groggers every time the name Haman was mentioned. I enjoyed the booing and hissing too ‘cause he was the bad guy who as prime minister tried to convince the king to commit genocide against all the Persian Jews. (He didn’t succeed and Purim is the festival holiday celebrating his defeat and our survival).

The making and eating of Hamantashen and the story-telling was the extent of the holiday as far as I knew. Not much to write home about. I didn’t hear about tradition of donning costumes much less the general drinking and revelry that accompanied Purim in some circles ‘til I heard about Chabad in my 20s.

Chabbadnicks were still scary to me at the time. The black hats, beards and paias made it clear they were not just separate from gentiles, but from me as well. I thought their retention of 16th Century Polish landowner costumes to be absurd and misguided if not destructive to intra-Jewish relations as well as interfatih understanding. But I was in grad school and decided I would be open-minded and see what it was they actually did. Rather than starting out with Yom Kippur though, I figured I’d go for a more light-hearted event like Purim. Especially if they know how to throw a party.

I get to the front of the line and I’m told “Ten dollars”. There’s a cover? Unbelievable. Like tickets at Yom Kippur. I nearly turn around but I decide, hell, I’m here already, I might as well stay. I don’t know if I’ll stay for more than a few minutes, but I’ll buy the ticket and take the ride.

The moment I step in the door a guy my age hands me a shot in a little plastic glass. “Le’Chaim!” And he downs it. I follow suit. He hands me a yarmulka and then runs away.

I get two more steps in the door and another guy, thrilled that I’m there approaches me like and old friend and says

“Hi, I’m Schlomo! What’s your name?”
“David.”
“Welcome.” He hands me another drink. “Le’Chaim!” Boom. Another one down.

A man in his late 50s comes up to me in an kick-ass costume. He’s got a super realistic looking Gandalf length beard and he’s actually wearing an ornate wizzard’s costume all the way down to the curly-tip brocaded shoes.

“You’re new here! Welcome.” He hands me a drink.
“Thanks. Le’Chaim!”

Another hit. The wizard runs off to join a group of other costumed men kicking it up like mad in a traditional circle dance. They’re ten feet away from a group of women doing the same.

Next to them I see the table with self-serve drinks. A dozen bottles of Crown Royal, another dozen liters of vodka and a host of other liquors from Slivovitz to Jameson. There were a total of 50 people there, so they were prepped to get hammered.

As I eye the booze, the guy standing next to me offers another shot. The fourth in under five minutes. And I say,

“Hold on. I need to catch my breath. Who was that last guy? His costume was amazing.”
“Him? That’s the rabbi.”
“The rabbi? What is he doing?”
“Tonight we’re playing a game. ‘Drink ‘til the rabbi drops’.”

This was not my rabbi. My rabbi was Rabbi Alex Goldman - 3rd generation conservative rabbi - age 134 when I was getting bar mitzvahed. OK, he was only 73, but his father was an old school Chicago rabbi who was still practicing at age 96. And even as a spry septagenarian, my rabbi talked old, thought old, and even SMELLED old. He was barely capable of smiling, much less partying. He was a lesson in severity and I was pretty darned sure he didn’t drink. I’ve been led to believe no one at my temple drank. They were part of that Americanized middle class Jew that I’m told doesn’t drink. I’ve been to other conservative services where they sip some whisky and vodka at their onegs, but we never had that. I heard stories that back in Russia my great-great-grandfather would start his day by downing a shot of vodka before his feet touched the ground. It was poured the previous evening and left within reach on his night stand. Of course, he didn’t have centralized heat, so he needed other ways to warm his cockles at the break of dawn. As for my childhood temple, we used our syrupy Manischevitz for our Kiddushes and I didn’t realize there were other kinds of wines until I saw Orson Wells on TV hawking jugs of Gallo in the thick of his sad, portly decline.

My dad drank Budweiser in those classic cans to borderline excess and washed it down with pretzels and peanuts every Sunday to the hum and crack of the NFL. Occasionally, I’d have a tiny sip just to see what it tasted like. Because of those afternoons I have a nostalgic love of that pisswater. It reminds me of the few relaxed father son moments spent in contented silence interrupted only by an occasional outburst from my father when he lost patience with the Giants once again.

I didn’t drink in high school one iota, but my days at Princeton taught me a blissful excess with my dear friend “Old no. 7”. My copious drinking in those days was instigated by my brothers in song and I didn’t really drink outside that circle. This is not to say I didn’t go too far at time. My favorite step over the line was a “Drop-trou” arch after which my dear English friend Crispy and his girlfriend carried me in classic drunken sailor style nearly a mile to the doorstep of the girl I had a terrible crush on. They deposited me and departed thinking they’d done a great mitzvah as I thought I’d be received warmly. In fact, no one was home. I figured I’d wait for her return. Some hours later my amore discovered my slumped figure blocking the entrance to her sleeping quarters and she gently nudged me awake and asked.

“What are you doing here?”

I attempt to explain what preceded my arrival was singing with my a cappella group for the last night of the football season for which it’s traditional that while mid-song, we lower our pants and brave the frigid November climes in recognition of the hardships our team went through. And to acclimatize ourselves to this endeavor, we steeled our loins against the environs by imbibing a classic sour mash.

What I got out was:

“I…Oh. Uh.” I try to stand. “Oooh. Bathroom?”

She opens the door of the women’s room, guides me to a stall and I make it to the toilet just in time. I beg her to leave, but she holds my hair as I wretch in front of the woman I had recently come to adore – only the third who’d actually agreed to kiss me at that godforsaken Puritan school. And now I’ve ruined everything.

We’re actually still friends today, but though I assured her I’d be fine if I just got a few hours of sleep on her hallway floor, she called the campus police and I was ushered home in the back seat of a flashing patrol car.

That was the third most drunk I’ve ever been and that night was NOTHING compared to Purim at Chabad house.

Fragments of memories are all that remain.

The costumes were out of control - both homemade as well as rented from professional costume houses. The most haunting beast was a 7 ft. tall blue Alladin genie – the Disney movie of the year. I’m still chilled when I recall holding hands with this monster while doing the huora.

Yes, I played my part in a human centrifuge for a good part of the evening, but at some point I joined the three-piece klezmer band, making them a quartet. The next day, I deduced that I became their extra percussionist as evidenced by the red thrashings my arms and legs appeared to have received from the crashing of my tambourine against various body parts.

The last image I have is trying to balance as I bicycled home. I certainly shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of anything that night, but I appear to have somehow made it back to my apartment.

It took a full 24 hours to even begin to recover and I’ve not been back to a Chabad Purim since that night.

But I do go to a great Purim party these days at the house of a conservative rabbi. He prefers single malt scotch. I bring an entire bottle with me. This year Trader Joe’s 11 year. It’s actually quite good. We go through quite a bit and I just take a cab home.

My favorite moment at that party came two years ago when I’d been tipsily flirting with a lovely woman all afternoon. Feeling I should meet the other guests, I engaged another gent in a talk for a while, at which point, I get a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see her a few more sheets to the wind than I’d last encountered her and she looked at me with all seriousness bearing on severity and burped out:

“David Rodwin…” She was still as stone, but clearly steadying herself with all her strength. “…We should procreate.”

Then she pulled an about face and exited. We never did procreate, but God, I love Purim these days.

Rockmoto Blog #4 - "You Have Nothing To Worry About"

February 1, 2009

It’s getting real now. Jess has told me I should take the Motorcycle Safety Foundation certification course to learn to ride. And it just so happens she teaches the course. Now other people teach the course as well, and I’ve told her I’m more comfortable learning from someone else, but she was unmoved. She wants to coach my course.

“It’ll be fun!”

I smell disaster. This is worse than my dad coaching my baseball and soccer teams – which he did seven years running when I was a kid. I appreciate the effort and love it indicated, but the scrutiny of having your dad as a coach is just a hard line to tow. Even if I got a base hit, I didn’t follow through enough. My elbow was too low. I didn’t keep my eye on the ball. The list goes on. I was never good enough. And now to have my girlfriend as my coach? Judging me and everything I do as potentially wrong? Lord only knows how that might explode.

Last week, I suggested again that she not coach the course I’m taking, but she doesn’t see it as a problem, so I’m going to just suck it up and get through it. I’ll be on my best behavior and hopefully I’ll ride well and not embarrass her. I’m sure she’s a great coach. It just seems like mixing personal and business is a particularly bad idea when sitting on a machine that’s notorious for mutilating people who don’t know how to ride them well. In soccer at least there are no machines you can go flying off of and be crushed underneath.

It seems there’s quite a waiting list for MSF courses, so I won’t be able to do it ‘til the end of February. In the meantime both she and my new roommate (who oddly used to be a motorcycle coach as well) have been trying to calm my nerves about taking the course. My nerves were fine until they started sharing their horror stories. My roommate related that his first day of coaching was the worst: “This guy totally lost control, flipped over the bike and broke his arm.” He checks to see my reaction. “But don’t worry. That never happens.” Then she’d chime in with a tale of some guy who popped a wheelie and nearly ran her over. “But really, you have nothing to worry about.”

What they don’t realize is that I’m really not concerned for my physical safety. I’m sure I’ll pick it up quickly enough and no one will die. That’s not my real source of distress.

What I fear is that if I don’t have the same enthusiasm for the things that mean so much to my girlfriend, we’ll be unable to connect in that arena that could severely limit the depth of her affinity towards me and perhaps my understanding of her. You might say this is all in my head, but it’s happened before.

The lucky part for me is that I have zero expertise in motorcycles. So I have no pre-formed opinions which might conflict with my lady’s crystallized vantage point. I’m such a clean slate, I’m open to absorbing her wealth of knowledge, adopting her preferences and generally being on her side of things as I take my first baby steps into this world. If she were a singer, I’d be in trouble, because I’ve got opinions galore in that realm. But, in this case, ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s just really helpful in getting along.

Rockmoto Blog #3 - The Old Motorscooter

January 15, 2009

When I used to make resolutions, by the end of January, half had already fallen by the wayside. But when someone else (like a new girlfriend) gives you a new years resolution it's a completely different scenario. So I’m doing this. Learning to ride. I hope I don’t sound reluctant. I have nothing against motorcycles, I’ve just never once even thought of making it a part of my life. And unlike driving a car, it seems riding really is a lifestyle. Something I know nothing about.

It’s not that I’ve never been on a bike. We had a Honda when I was a kid. A Honda motor scooter, that is. It had two wheels and an engine, but that was about the only manner in which it resembled a motorcycle. My dad had it from when he was a teenager. It was a 1950s gun-metal blue clunker. Must have weighed 300lbs. And it was always a special treat to take it out. When I was little I’d sit behind my dad and hold on for dear life even though the top speed was about 30mph - downhill. It never occurred to me I ought to be wearing a helmet. Didn’t occur to my dad either. Maybe it was because the thing barely had enough power to make it up the littlest hill. Or maybe we were just less fearful of severe head trauma in those days. I don’t think I ever had a child seat in the car - much to the chagrin of my mother whose only means to restrain my brother and me were prophetic threats “If you don’t stop doing that I’m going to pull over right now!”

When I was a teen, I even took out the Honda a few times on my own and at least that experience means I have the basics of balancing, gripping a hand throttle and pumping a 2-wheeler around the curvy Connecticut back roads I grew up on.

But then there’s my woman’s Suzuki GSX-R 750 (See. I’ve even learned the letters in her bike’s name!) You have to lean forward on the fuel tank like you’re an anime character about to fly off into space and battle robot monsters. The speedometer is electronic – as if it can go as fast as three digits will allow. One assumes a mere dial would shatter if you kept it analog. And the tachometer doesn’t hit the Red ‘til 15,000 RPM. For someone who’s gotten used to driving cars and keeping it under 5K, that number is perfectly terrifying – especially as the motor would be pumping away right between my legs. I’m rather particular about what I come in contact with down there.

But I’ll try not to think about that for now.

I think it’ll be cool to learn how to ride. I’m not sure if I’m gonna buy a bike and head to Sturges yet, but you never know.

Rockmoto Blog #2 - Road-trip. Destination: Solvang, CA

January 1, 2009

We’re heading up to wine country for New Year’s. It’s gonna be a fun trip. We’ll take my old convertible, put the top down and let the breeze blow in our hair as we trip up the 101.

But I can’t help to wonder, if I were a rider, would we hop on our bikes to go up there? Would that be much cooler? More fun? Unbelievably exciting? Is she bummed we’re in a car? Or would it just be more exhausting and potentially catastrophic should we do the wine tastings on two wheels? (It just occurred to me that in the movie Sideways which takes place in the very town we’ll be staying in, Sandra Oh’s character no only rides a motorcycle, but she beats her philandering lover (engaged to someone else) to a pulp with her very helmet.

Would we ride separate bikes or would we ride together? I suppose we could ride together, but at this point she’d have to drive, as I have no license. To do that, she’d have to have a back seat, which her sport bike does not sport. So we’re taking the car.

I think cycling would be the best way to do wine country. (Aside from a limo perhaps)

I cycled seriously for years. Long distance touring. Sometimes a hundred miles a day -carrying all my own food and gear (a good 50 lbs.). So in terms of riding, I’m familiar how my own bodyweight can affect performance – particularly digging into turns, but I never raced, so the degree to which I was challenged with high speeds was quite limited.

I also have an idea of what it is to be not only a more vulnerable rider sharing the road with cars and trucks, but to have an affiliation with an entire set of folks on the road. It didn’t matter where you were from, what you were riding, or what you did when you weren’t on a bike. Cyclists have a certain respect and affinity with one another. Every one of us has had to straight arm a car that didn’t see us as it took a right hand turn into our path. Most every serious rider has had at least one crash – enough to give them the respect and caution necessary not to get killed in the future.

But the truth is I haven’t even ridden a bike for years. I was in a nasty, freak cycling accident 3 years ago. The seat to my bicycle fell off while I was riding and I couldn’t get my foot out of my toe-clip in time, so snap went my tibia and fibula. I spent 3 months in a cast and while I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of getting back on the horse, I haven’t gotten a new bike in all this time. So in truth some fear is lingering there, even though I love cycling. I mean I really did love it. The feeling of freedom and the wind rushing past your face. There’s nothing like it. Except maybe riding a motor cycle. We shall see.