{"id":800,"date":"2007-05-20T22:45:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-21T06:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2007\/05\/20\/in-my-life-2\/"},"modified":"2007-05-20T22:45:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-21T06:45:00","slug":"in-my-life-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2007\/05\/20\/in-my-life-2\/","title":{"rendered":"In My Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rubber Soul<\/strong><\/p>\n

All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all<\/em><\/p>\n

On the door of my mother’s refrigerator is the story of my life.<\/p>\n

We sat on the tarmac for two and a half hours.\u00c2\u00a0 At first it was only supposed to be forty five minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 Which seemed tolerable until parked on the far reaches of LAX, they shut off the a\/c.\u00c2\u00a0 And when half an hour later they announced we were going to sit still for another hour and fifty minutes, there was a revolt.<\/p>\n

Fearing American would get a reputation as the new Jet Blue, the captain announced we were going back to the gate.\u00c2\u00a0 But when we got there he said if we got off we had to STAY off.\u00c2\u00a0 And that our bags would go to New York anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 Those more worried about pets than people carried their dogs off the plane.\u00c2\u00a0 A couple of young women with children exited too.\u00c2\u00a0 And then ten minutes later, they pushed us back out.<\/p>\n

You see there were thunderstorms on the east coast.\u00c2\u00a0 And the landing was far from easy, but computers fly these planes, don’t they?<\/p>\n

And when we reached Bridgeport’s Park Avenue, it was after midnight, even the rodents were in for the night.\u00c2\u00a0 And when we entered my mother’s building and I turned on the lights in her apartment, I was confronted with the photo of my father, with his best friend, Al, the appliance king, buddies in the seventies.<\/p>\n

Only one problem, they were younger then than I am now.<\/p>\n

And my nephews, in these pictures they were far from puberty.<\/p>\n

I could trace myself from high school to today on my mother’s fridge.\u00c2\u00a0 It was positively freaky.\u00c2\u00a0 I felt like I was living in a Harry Chapin song.\u00c2\u00a0 While I was focusing on what was right in front of me, my whole life had slipped by.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if I didn’t grab hold, soon it would expire.<\/p>\n

Pepe’s Pizza<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perusing "Esquire" in the eighties I read that the best pizza in America was made twenty minutes from where I grew up, at Pepe’s, in New Haven, Connecticut.\u00c2\u00a0 On the phone with my father, I asked him about it.\u00c2\u00a0 He started waxing rhapsodic, it was like he had a whole ‘nother life, separate from mine…\u00c2\u00a0 How come he’d never taken me there?<\/p>\n

Pizza in Bridgeport is exceptional.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s got a thin crust.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, thin under the tomato sauce and the cheese.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s gigantic on the end rim.\u00c2\u00a0 And on top of the whole pie is an oil slick.\u00c2\u00a0 The pizza would come from the oven and we’d burn the roof of our mouths, not being able to wait for it to cool down.<\/p>\n

This was what I knew as pizza until I moved to California.<\/p>\n

You don’t want to eat Mexican in Connecticut, and you don’t want to consume pizza in L.A.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just not the SAME THING!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s bread.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas real pizza is unique, a delicacy unto itself.<\/p>\n

So the next time I was in Connecticut, I went to New Haven and lined up with the Yalies at Pepe’s.\u00c2\u00a0 It was exceptional.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially the house specialty, the white clam pizza.<\/p>\n

I haven’t been to New Haven in years.\u00c2\u00a0 But my mother told me they opened a Pepe’s in Fairfield.\u00c2\u00a0 The Roadfood<\/a> website said it was just as good, but that we had to be prepared for the line.<\/p>\n

There was no line on Thursday afternoon, we walked right in.\u00c2\u00a0 We ordered a ‘za with sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and onions.\u00c2\u00a0 And when our waitress Dawn served our pizza sans the crying vegetable, she brought out a whole new pie, just tomato sauce, cheese and onions.<\/p>\n

With just a hit of pepper, the pizza was life itself.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know what’s more primal, sex or eating.\u00c2\u00a0 But either one done well gets you in touch with your humanity, your identity as a physical being on the planet.\u00c2\u00a0 Every slice hit the spot, I couldn’t stop, eating pizza was my raison d’etre.<\/p>\n

And Dawn noticed Felice’s crutch and started testifying about her tummy tuck, she even showed us her scar.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the east coast, where everybody truly is a star, where their story is all that matters.<\/p>\n

\n

Pepe’s Pizza<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Carolina Day<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t think I’ve even been to Carolina, North or South.\u00c2\u00a0 But I played James Taylor’s "Carolina In My Mind" incessantly when I got his Apple debut in the spring of ’70.\u00c2\u00a0 I loved it and its successor "Sweet Baby James" so much that I bought his brother Livingston’s album, with "Carolina Day".\u00c2\u00a0 Just before I went to college I babysat for Eric Weiner, whose house backed up to ours.\u00c2\u00a0 And I played that album on the stereo.<\/p>\n

My mother left that Fairfield abode just over three years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Felice wanted to see it.\u00c2\u00a0 Again.\u00c2\u00a0 And just as we pulled up a woman in a Subaru turned into the driveway.\u00c2\u00a0 And when she opened the front door I saw changes.\u00c2\u00a0 They’d replaced the door to Wendy’s room, they’d repainted.\u00c2\u00a0 It bizarred me.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess I wanted that house to stay the same forever.<\/p>\n

But that’s the way of the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Time marches on.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s our house no longer.<\/p>\n

Driving through the old neighborhood I was suddenly in touch with who I used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 Living in a land where where you went to college and who your parents were was so important.\u00c2\u00a0 I like living in L.A., where the most important thing is what kind of car you drive.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s just phony enough for me.\u00c2\u00a0 No one gives a shit about me.\u00c2\u00a0 And I like it that way.<\/p>\n

Yet you can’t deny where you come from.\u00c2\u00a0 But how do you put all of the pieces of the puzzle together?\u00c2\u00a0 The victories and the losses?\u00c2\u00a0 The marriages and the divorces?\u00c2\u00a0 The longer we live, the more our imperfection reveals itself.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re a complicated species.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re unpredictable, we often don’t make sense.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes we don’t even make sense to ourselves.<\/p>\n

Digital Photography<\/strong><\/p>\n

Suddenly, record sales have dried up.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody wants discs, and you can’t survive on the sale of digital singles.<\/p>\n

We’ve been told this day has been imminent for seven years.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s finally here.\u00c2\u00a0 Sales have dropped by twenty percent from last year.\u00c2\u00a0 And last year was a shitty year.<\/p>\n

Do people no longer want music?<\/p>\n

Just open your eyes, and your ears.\u00c2\u00a0 Those white headphone cords are everywhere.\u00c2\u00a0 And music kept tonight’s wedding together.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what music is, the glue, the special sauce, that adds the flavor.<\/p>\n

You’d think it would be best if everybody had access to that flavor, if everybody could enjoy it.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what technology affords, that’s what the old white men decry.<\/p>\n

The record business is Kodak.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve been hearing for eons that digital was going to kill film.\u00c2\u00a0 It finally has.\u00c2\u00a0 And who’s lamenting the death of the old format?\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody I know.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe just the Rochester giant, which is now hoping printers will save its bottom line.<\/p>\n

Not everybody used to have a camera, and those who had one didn’t always use it.\u00c2\u00a0 Photography was frustrating.\u00c2\u00a0 Half the pictures were useless.\u00c2\u00a0 And printing them was not cheap.\u00c2\u00a0 Photography wasn’t exactly a luxury, but it wasn’t the hobby of seemingly everybody.<\/p>\n

Now we’ve even got CELL PHONES with cameras.\u00c2\u00a0 At the wedding this evening digital cameras were in abundance.\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be that only the hired photographer shot pictures.\u00c2\u00a0 But now everybody wants a personal record of the event, everybody wants to play.<\/p>\n

Is this bad?<\/p>\n

I don’t see how.\u00c2\u00a0 The laughs, the happiness the resultant photos engender, they bring us together.\u00c2\u00a0 In the same way music does, but now can even more, utilizing the same digital tools.<\/p>\n

You can take your music with you, with your iPod.\u00c2\u00a0 You can not only listen on headphones, you can plug your device into a tiny speaker, and turn a hotel room into a party.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly everybody has access to music.\u00c2\u00a0 At least in theory.\u00c2\u00a0 However the old white men want to keep the sound from the people.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather than spread the wealth and charge for the privilege, the old white men have imported the CD model to the Net.<\/p>\n

Obviously they don’t use music in the new way.\u00c2\u00a0 If they did, they’d know that people don’t want one or two tracks, but ALL the tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 And that copy protection is a red herring.\u00c2\u00a0 And that a buck a track is too much.\u00c2\u00a0 Who’s gonna pay thousands to fill their iPod?<\/p>\n

But if everybody has an iPod, and everybody pays a little bit…<\/p>\n

That’s the world we live in.\u00c2\u00a0 The old white men are in denial.\u00c2\u00a0 They reminisce about a day when they had control, when radio and MTV drove people into retail stores to buy ten million copies of an album.<\/p>\n

Those days are through.\u00c2\u00a0 MTV plays no music, and radio’s a joke.\u00c2\u00a0 As for retail…there’s more excitement in the flat screen section than there is in the ever-shrinking music department.\u00c2\u00a0 The people control the music now.\u00c2\u00a0 The only option is to serve them, in the way they want.<\/p>\n

A prediction?<\/p>\n

In the future, many people will own a lot of music.\u00c2\u00a0 And they’ll be happier for it.<\/p>\n

Not that’s it’s hard to foresee this coming reality, for it already exists.\u00c2\u00a0 All that needs to be done is to bring it above ground, for the purveyors to charge for it.<\/p>\n

Don’t tell me that photos are different from music.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll just say the new bands are going to give the music away, and you won’t be able to charge for ANYTHING if you don’t get with the program.<\/p>\n

For My Wedding<\/strong><\/p>\n

To want what I have
To take what I’m given with grace
For this I pray
On my wedding day<\/em><\/p>\n

In 2000 Don Henley released a stiff album.<\/p>\n

Well, stiff if you consider a million copies of the work of an Eagle a disappointment.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, in today’s marketplace, that number would evidence a hit.<\/p>\n

Contained on "Inside Job" is a cover song, "For My Wedding".<\/p>\n

And this number was going through my mind today, as I watched the Reverend perform the ceremony, as I saw two young people start their lives together.<\/p>\n

I was married once.\u00c2\u00a0 It didn’t take.<\/p>\n

But it’s best to share your life with someone.\u00c2\u00a0 This world is not about achievement, but companionship.<\/p>\n

And to spend years with another human being is tough.\u00c2\u00a0 They come from a different background, sometimes they piss you off.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you’ve got a good one, they know who you are, the connection is maintained, because we all want to be known.<\/p>\n

We used to want to know the musicians, back before they became tools of the corporations.\u00c2\u00a0 We won’t care again until they realize their responsibility is to us, not the man.<\/p>\n

But the man is everywhere.\u00c2\u00a0 He owns the media.\u00c2\u00a0 He tells us what to like, how to feel.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though he’s got no idea who we are.\u00c2\u00a0 The musicians used to know who we were.\u00c2\u00a0 They no longer do.\u00c2\u00a0 Whether it be the oldsters all about the payday or the rappers all about the Benjamins.\u00c2\u00a0 We live in a money-oriented society.<\/p>\n

But I’ve got to ask you, did money ever keep you warm at night?<\/p>\n

If money were the answer, Christina Onassis would still be with us today.<\/p>\n

We want love.\u00c2\u00a0 We want touch.<\/p>\n

And until we get there, and even after we do, what will hold us together is music.<\/p>\n

Music doesn’t belong to the record companies, it doesn’t even belong to those who make it, it belongs to us.<\/p>\n

And that’s the way it should be.<\/p>\n

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Rubber Soul All these places have their momentsWith lovers and friends I still can recallSome are dead and some are livingIn my life I’ve loved them all On the door of my mother’s refrigerator is the story of my life. We sat on the tarmac for two and a half hours.\u00c2\u00a0 At first it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-cU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}