“This is the season when a clutch of successful women—who have it all — give speeches to women like you and say, to be perfectly honest, you can’t have it all. Maybe young women don’t wonder whether they can have it all any longer, but in case any of you are wondering, of course you can have it all. What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don’t be frightened: you can always change your mind.”
This is amazing. In advance of the premiere of his new show, someone took the time to cut together all the dialogue writer Aaron Sorkin recycles from his television shows and films. Zeke Miller at BuzzFeed called it “heartbreaking.” I am just really impressed by the supercut. Gathering all these video snippets must have taken forever.
It’s been an eclectic week of live shows, that’s for sure. NPR Music’s Bob Boilen, who hosts All Songs Considered, has been wanting to go to a show together, and last week we settled on Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. The gazillion-piece band puts on a generous and fun live show, and they have some sentimental significance for me since photog Channing set his 2010 slideshow of our wedding photos to the Edward Sharpe hit, “Home.”
That show was Tuesday night. The band delivered. And that was probably the “hippest” show I saw all week.
Heard it From a Friend Who Heard it From a Friend
B y Friday we were at a performance by 1980s monster ballad makers REO Speedwagon and Styx, thanks to our boss Joel. Joel’s little bro Todd Sucherman is the drummer for Styx and we’ve been wanting to go see him for as long as we’ve known that bit of trivia. It finally happened, and it was magical out there in the Virginia ampitheatre, in perfect 70 degree weather, eight rows back from the stage.
After the show we went backstage and met the members of Styx (including the few remaining original members) and Drummer Todd cracked us up with his almost total recall of Arrested Development scenes. That guy is rad.
Four: Repeat Steps One Through Three
Capped the week off with 1990s R&B great Brian McKnight. This was basically an impulse move. Sometime at a bar last week, I was telling friend Ian how much I loved 90s R&B, especially artists like Brian McKnight. Ian thought he had heard McKnight would be in DC and sure enough, the crooner was set to perform at the historic Howard Theatre on Sunday night. We bought tickets right then and there. Some photos:
I heard it from a friend who, heard it from a friend that REO Speedwagon was playing a live show.
We showed up just in time for REO Speedwagon and just late enough to miss Ted Nugent (on purpose).
The proof we were there photo.
Marc (center) came back from New York for this epic night.
The proof we were there together shot. L to R: Joel, Marc, Matty, Me (and fetus)
Styx takes the stage! There’s original band member Tommy Shaw in silhouette.
Crooning a ballad.
Tried to get an action shot of Joel’s little bro, Todd Sucherman, on the drums.
Tommy Shaw and Chuck Palozzo, both original band members.
Todd Sucherman in action!
Time for a group sing! Come Sail Away…
We caught Todd Sucherman’s signature drum stick (made with Texas maple) that he threw into the crowd.
Curtain call
Backstage with Styx! Joel and his baby bro, drummer Todd Sucherman.
Marc, Todd, me, Matty backstage
And Brian McKnight was joined by the Duke Ellington Orchestra, which was amaaazing.
I had deep, deep love for the tenor sax player.
Howard Theatre is a fantastic historic venue, recently redone.
There he is getting hounded when he tried to go the bar to get a drink — Brian McKnight.
About a year ago, when I ran into my DC-based writer pal Robert Draper while he was on his way to interview someone for his book, I told him that whenever the book came out and he got invited to go on The Daily Show, I wanted to go along.
The book — Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives — came out this Tuesday, and Draper actually remembered my request. He invited me to join his brother John, girlfriend Laura and longtime pal Colin in attending the live taping at the small Daily Show studio (CAMERAS VERBOTEN!) on the Upper West side. (I tried to hear any distinctive laughter from our little group, but it’s all pretty muddled.)
The latest trailer and New York Magazine’s cover story have sufficiently sold me on a show that I’ve yet to see. “An upcoming HBO comedy about four women trying to make it in New York that’s as raw and bruised as Sex and the City was aspirational…”
I usually leave the internet distractions to Reeve, but when I returned to my computer after a weekend of family time in Chicago, the interwebs had gifted me with so much goodness. Herewith:
There are places I remember in my life (though some have changed). The time I spent in South Carolina and Texas happens to overlap neatly with that of Rob Teter, Marshall Hood, and their band(s). It wasn’t until young Rob was in DC over the weekend that I realized how much that overlapping influenced my larger journey.
I met teenagers Rob and Marshall — and their pal Jeff Brown — in their last year of high school and my first full year in Spartanburg, SC, their home town. I was doing a story on the minor musical resurgence of Spartanburg, and the boys, who were 17-year-olds playing old Americana tunes as The DesChamps Band, were abuzz. They performed for the photog and me on Marshall’s parents back deck, and I turned a quick story, below. (This is embarrassing, as I was age 23 and sounded like a 12-year-old.)
A year later, I started my new TV job in Austin and the boys had disbanded to attend college, but never stopped playing music. Marshall had moved to Austin, too. That’s where he met Phoebe Hunt, an Austin native and one of the most talented young fiddlers around. A few months later, Rob and his buddies from college in New Orleans joined up with Marshall and Phoebe to jam, and through circumstance and serendipity (a spot opened up at MerleFest), they became The Belleville Outfit. The boys took a break from college, converged in Austin and followed their musical journey. (Spoiler alert: It worked out for them. The band was not a flop.)
Because I found them for that story when they were so young, I feel a real familial kind of relationship with some of those guys. I got to know Uncle Seth and Cousin Warren and moms and dads. Rob and I reminisced about the fall night in 2007 when the band came over to Casa Hu-Stiles at 3am after a “meh” gig to help finish off the beer and food from a party we threw earlier that evening. Queso-blurred memories.
The one time I met Chuck Klosterman I totally whiffed my pickup line.
For Christmas, Matty got me a set of Chuck Klosterman Hypothetical Cards. (If this sounds lame, he did get me other stuff, too, like a TripIt PRO account! I was most excited about that and promptly started updating my TripIt on Christmas morning.)
Anyway. There is one hypothetical on each card, and they involve situations like what you’d do if you came home to a trashed house and Shaquille O’Neal was in your shower, or whether you’d own up to the fact you accidentally got selected to be saved from a meteor crashing to earth. Stuff like that. Every time we’ve been in the car since I got the cards, we have chosen one hypothetical to talk through or argue about.
“This question raises a larger point about everything we pretend to understand about relationships, and particularly what we assume we understand about monogamy (and when infidelity technically begins). So while your answer to this question might seem unambiguous, the criteria you use to reach the conclusion are generally more important than the answer itself.”
If you haven’t considered this one, read it through. Once you’re done, we can have a conversation about it sometime over food and beverages. Regarding whose side I’m on, I’ve consistently held my position and am happy to defend it. Then again, if you’re a friend of mine that goes drinking with me, you probably already know whose side I’m on.
Over the summer, I attended a WordPress meetup for the free barbecue. The place was a meat market in more ways than one.
One of the few women in attendance was my friend The Beam, who got hit on by a developer from Living Social, the instant coupon company. His pickup line went something like this: “We have a two-for-one deal to Regal [movie theaters] right now, if you’d want to go…”
So I couldn’t help but wonder*: With the proliferation of Groupon and Groupon-wannabes, is it now cool to use coupons on a date?
I like to ponder these vexing relationships-in-a-digital-age questions, so I started doing some reporting. A quick search online led me to plenty of heated debates and conflicting blog posts, and the people I trust, like Friend Matt, were just as undecided about it as I was:
Is it attractively frugal? Retro enough to be hipster? Or just cheap? Is there a threshold — 10% off is lame but 2-for-1 is worth it?
Like any relationship exploration, what works for one couple doesn’t work for others, la la la. And let’s assume that we are unpacking this idea for early-stage couples, because I know my partner-of-eight-years would not think twice about using a Groupon for a two-for-one deal at Popeye’s Chicken with me, and vice versa. So let’s focus on fledgling relationships. The various approaches:
