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Right Around Christmas Time
In the off season (that is, when we weren’t playing whiffle ball), Chris and I used to lock ourselves inside the garage with our neighbors, Sean and Dusty, and lip synch Billy Joel’s “Glass Houses” strumming tennis racket as if they were guitars. The irony, of course, is that there are no guitars on “Glass…
Read MoreA Family Holiday
I’m hoping it’s fairly apparent to you what I’ve been up to all weekend. With the exception of a few good runs, a few bad movies (yes, we sat through “Hot Rod”), and a whole bunch of reading (Vanity Fair, New Yorker, New York Times, Rolling Stone and “The Looming Tower: Al-Queda And The Road…
Read MoreBlack Friday
Come Christmas time, my family typically wagers its best gift giving guesses. It’s a less presumptuous and more spontaneous approach, but has a tendency to backfire (like when I find brown leather slippers or plaid flannel boxer shorts under the tree). The Kellers, however, view gift giving a bit differently. The make lists. Less surprises?…
Read MoreBoys & Girls In America
I’m sure of it: I’m the last dude in New York City to hear The Hold Steady. Wednesday night’s Terminal 5 show — the conclusion of band’s sixteen-month Boys & Girls In America Tour — was packed with dudes: Budweiser chugging, hip flask tugging, tobacco chewing, weed smoking, fist pumping, frat boy, douche bags. Or…
Read MoreTruckin’
Ask anyone. I’m not a huge fan of The Grateful Dead. At the moment, though — traveling seventy miles-per-hour on the Pennsylvania Turnpike some 37 miles west of Harrisburg — “Truckin’” is kinda’ doin’ it for me. Earlier, I remarked to my brother — who is a huge Deadhead, so huge that the only CDs…
Read MoreBlack & Gold
My brother is a quote machine. “I haven’t had a three dollar beers since college!” After last night’s $6 room service Iron City bottles, I understand and appreciate his enthusiasm. We’re at Doubleday’s on Sixth Street in downtown Pittsburgh, our third bar of the night. Every one of ’em have been absolutely throbbing with Steeler…
Read MoreSpectral Morning
My eyes were half-closed and choked with sleep this morning as I stepped into the darkened bathroom. The backyard was framed by the window pane, it’s slender birch trees pale white against the bruised purple sky. They stood like hungry ghosts against the waning night sky, their shoulders wrapped in a veil of pink and…
Read MoreAcross The Road From Hope
How quickly things change. Abbi called me Friday night to tell me her flight from Monteray, Mexico, had landed just as my train to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, pulled out of Penn Station. As I was queueing for a cab at 30th Street Station, she called to informed me that her granmother was in the hospital. Moments…
Read MoreThe Blue Lights
I didn’t know The Olds could lose their shit like this! I’m in Philly with my pals, The Nadas. I snuck out of work early, hopped on Amtrak, and then cabbed over to World Cafe where the guys just opened up for The Subdudes. The Subdudes are a talented-enough New Orleans-based quintet. They sound something…
Read More1, 2, 3, 4
Please forgive me. I have neither the time, nor the wherewithal to sufficiently characterize Chris, Tony and my Lifebeat: Hearts & Voices performance last night at the Robert Mapplethorp Residence (a residential treatment facility for New Yorkers living with AIDS) except to tell you that it was uncomfortable, insightful, and inspirational in nearly equal measure.…
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