Like most folks these days, I get a lot of spam emails.  Fortunately AOL (who now manages my day to day email) does a surprisingly decent job of filtering these out and they end up in my spam folder.  Every once in a while I check to see if there’s anything important out there that was mistakenly flagged – it’s rare but it does happen.

Needless to say I never respond to any of these (the spam that is).  This must be very frustrating for the hard working people who devise these emails.  In an effort to help these good folks, I’m thinking of starting up an advice column for spam writers to help them reach their target goals and make a decent living.  It might look something like this:

– – – – – – – – – – –
Dear Spam Advisor,
   I ofer nice peple much money but they do not respond.   Here is what I say:
Good afternoon,   My name is Mrs Suzy Joseph. (Advocate) I wrote to you earlier but you did not respond. I need your assistance in retrieving of my late client’s funds worth ($8,500.000 U.S.) deposited with the bank security department for safe keeping. Note that your surname is similar to my late client’s family last name and that was the reason why I have contacted you to assist me to retrieve the unclaimed funds because the bank has issued me an official mandate to submit the beneficiary’s name for claim or they will confiscate and close the account if no response.   If you are interested for more information regarding this mutual profit transaction, kindly get back to me urgently. Our sharing ratio stands 50%-50%. You will have $4,250,000.00 Dollars as your own share over this transaction. Send your information to me urgently with your full names and Mobile Number.Regards.
Mrs Suzy Joseph.

 Dear Spam Advisor,
   I want nice men to have with the sex, but no man wants the sex with me.  Here is my mail.  What should I do?   Hi.  I’m Vicky 21 years old, I’m a chocolate, curvy woman with a great a**.  I’m looking for a man, that can gratify me, as I attend to him in bed.   I will make you have nice feelings with me.   

Spam Advisor says,
Dear Suzy & Vicky,
   I give the same advice to both of you, since the solution is the same.  The money alone will not get any response since everyone in America is very wealthy and does not need the money, nor will the sex alone.   My advice is to offer both the money and the sex.  This will get you very much responses.
– – – – – – – – – – –

As to what such a combined spam email would look like – I’ll leave it to your imagination.

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There are no gigs or concerts this month, but starting in April things are picking up.  In the meanwhile, I offer for your listening pleasure a new composition – but first I need to give a bit of historical background.

Arshin Mal Alan (lit. The Cloth Peddler) is a romantic operetta written in 1913 by Azuzeyir Hajibeyli – a renowned Azerbaijani composer. Two movies were made in the USSR based on this operatta.

This piece utilizes many musical motifs from the operetta, most notably the “Aria of Asker” which is the first song in the opera. You may listen to my creation here:  Variations on Aria of Asker.   I hope to get very much responses to this piece.

If there’s any one thing that makes me crazy (apart from the fact that the world is falling apart) it’s wasting food.  We hates it!   Seriously.

When I’m hungry and look in the fridge for something?  I will instinctively choose the oldest leftover.  When we go out to a nice restaurant?  My favorite thing is when I have leftovers.   Oh boy, I get to have a gourmet meal for lunch tomorrow.   Yippee yay!

I will even eat food that I don’t care for to avoid wasting it but – I do have my limits.   We had a package of veggie hotdogs left over from our 2019 4th of July party lying around in the back of our freezer.  2 years later I reluctantly threw them out – but even then I felt a bit guilty.

I know exactly how this behavior started.  My mother grew up in the depression, her family was desperately poor.  Food was precious and was never ever thrown out or wasted.  It’s likely that this behavior would have been passed on even if there were no depression – seeing as my mom’s parents were from the old country and likely suffered even more before they immigrated.  Regardless, that’s how I was raised.  Apart from the standard “finish your dinner, children are starving in India” stuff, I don’t have any specific memories of being lectured about or punished for wasting food – it was just the air we breathed.   Thou shalt not waste food.

I like to think that I’ve done a decent job of passing this on to my kids.

This attitude has spilled over into much of my daily life.   I will walk or take mass transit if possible.  Our cars are hybrid (wasn’t adventurous enough to get battery powered) – and we drive them until they fall apart.   I wear clothes until they’re threadbare.   I do not go out and buy the very latest technology (except for my composing needs).  Indeed.   I did not switch over from my ancient Motorola Flip Phone to my iPhone until I was literally forced to do so by my company.   That constantly embarrassed my kids. “Dad!  Why are you still using that old phone?”

We haven’t gone solar in our house.  It doesn’t break even – due to limited roof space because of a large attic dormer facing south.   Damn those turn of the century architects, why couldn’t they plan ahead?    And speaking of houses, this is one area in which I am guilty of not following my principles.   Now that Lisa & I are empty nesters, it makes no sense for us to be rattling around in our 110 year old 5 bedroom 3 story house.  But the very thought of moving gives us mild panic attacks.   So we do our best – we keep the thermostat at 68 in winter (brrr) and 74 in summer.   But it’s still a wasteful extravagance.  I assuage my guilt feelings by buying carbon offsets.

Have you done any serious assuaging recently?

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Short Story for Mixed Ensemble
I still have no upcoming concerts or appearances, but I have obtained a really good video of a concert performance of a new composition of mine.   This concert (last November) was produced by the New York Composer’s Collective and featured the Exponential Ensemble (a woodwind trio) augmented with cello & piano.  I was a bit nervous whether the piece would work.  In rehearsal I had to drop a whole section because it was too difficult for the players (and these players were top notch professionals).   Bad composer, Eric!    Also, the room had a very noticeable echo to it.

But, the players did a super job.  What’s more (and this is something that makes a composer happy) they “got it”.   Watch the body language of the clarinet player in the opening segment – it’s subtle but you can see he’s feeling it.  Here’s the video:   Short Story for Mixed Ensemble

This will be the finale in a trifecta of posts about literature.   Advanced warming: this post contains some crude language that I don’t normally use in polite company (and I know that everyone reading this is the epitome of politeness).

Most likely you already got the titled reference above – but just in case – I am of course referring to Don Quixote written by Cervantes and originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615.   The last time I read Don Quixote was in high school – most of it was over my head.   This time round it was great fun and very revealing. 

So much has been said about this book (it was the first post-modern novel, etc, etc) that I can safely skip over any plot summary and/or analysis;  I’ll assume that everyone is familiar with the basics.  What struck me is how real it felt – I cringed at the cruel blows inflicted on poor Don Quixote & Sancho Panza.   But beyond that?  Cervantes was way ahead of his time in many ways, but one thing in particular jumped out at me.  He did something that no other major novelist would do for centuries to come.   To wit: he wrote about the – umm – messier aspects of human existence.  

Yes.   Don Quixote & Sancho Panza shit, piss, and throw up.  Sancho refers to excreting as “That which no one else can do for you.”   There’s a good portion of one chapter re-counting Sancho’s having to “hold it in” to stop the Don from doing something foolish.  Sancho finally lets loose.  No other novelist that followed for centuries mentioned these topics (at least to my limited knowledge). 

• Did Anna Karenina bother to empty her bladder before she threw herself under that train?   Nyet.
• Did Atticus Finch take a dump before he gave his stirring speech in To Kill A Mockingbird?   I reckon not.
• Did Mary Poppins ever clean up vomit?   Beats me, never read the book.  But I doubt it.

But maybe I’ve overlooked something obvious.

Anyway, I highly recommend Don Quixote.   The Edith Grossman translation was great, but I’m sure they’re all good.

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Rumble for Two Pianos
I have no upcoming concerts or appearances, but I have a new composition to tout.   Rumble For Two Pianos started as an idea I got during a break at a Better Off Dead gig at the Great Notch Inn in December 2019.   I heard this slinky left hand boogie-woogie bass line.  When I got home I immediately logged into the computer and recorded it.  In the next few weeks I fooled around with it for a bit and came up with a raw idea involving not one but two pianos.   By using two pianos, one piano could double up on the left hand boogie-woogie line to really pump it up, while the second piano could all sorts of cool right hand stuff.   I then put it on the back burner due to a glut of ideas competing for my attention.

I fooled around with this a bit in 2020 and then sporadically last summer.  Finally this November I started serious work.  In December I played a first draft at a New York Composers Circle salon; I got a lot of good feedback from my fellow composers and have incorporated some of their suggestions into the piece.  It’s not quite finished, but it’s close enough to give folks a sneak peak. 

This is possibly the single most rock & roll piece I’ve written since starting this composing thing – and also the most atonal / dissonant.   I’m curious to get your reactions.  You can listen here:  Rumble for Two Pianos.

So last month, after discussing some of my eccentric likes & dislikes literature-wise, I finished off with the question – borrowed from the New York Times Book Review section – “You’ve inviting 3 famous authors, dead or alive, to dinner.  Who are they?”    

Intrepid reader Lilliana V. responded with Ernesto Sábato, John Kennedy Toole, and Gabriel García Márquez.  I confess that I was not familiar with Sábato.  I remember reading Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude back in college but only have dim memories of it.  

But Toole was a surprising choice to me.   For those of you unfamiliar with him, John Kennedy Toole had a pretty tragic life; he wrote only one book in the mid 1960s – A Confederacy of Dunces – which was rejected by publishers.  Depressed, he committed suicide a few years later.  Long story short, in 1980 the book was finally published and in 1981Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

A few years back while on vacation I tried reading A Confederacy of Dunces but gave up about 2/3 through.  I couldn’t stand the characters – they did one stupid thing after another and I just couldn’t summon up the strength to plow through to the end.  On the other hand, Lilliana V (along with millions of readers) found the book to be hilarious.  Just goes to show how tastes can vary.

Now not finishing a book is a very rare event for me – even if the books is not great I usually want to see how things turn out.  But if you are looking for a book that you do NOT want to finish?   I can highly recommend Remembrance of Things Past (AKA In Search of Lost Time) by Proust.  Yeesh!   Yeah, yeah.  I know it’s supposed to be one of the greatest novels ever written, but what do these critics know?  Bah!  The characters are a bunch of tedious unlikable boors – I made it 100 pages in then gave up.  But if you’re curious, I can save you the trouble of reading it.   Here is a quick example of the type of thing you’ll be reading:

“I made ready to attend dinner with the Comtesse G. and her dear friend Francoise.  On the way out I noticed that I had a smudge on my left sleeve.  How could this have possibly occurred?  I summoned up my powers of memory and recollected that earlier in the afternoon, while I was writing a letter to Mlle. T, beseeching her to re-unite our love, in the midst of my reveries I foolishly did not notice my arm leaning against the letter before the ink had dried.  Regardless, the Comtesse is very relaxed about these misfortunes, so I did not go back and change my outfit.  The coach dropped me off in front of her exquisite front door.   The dinner consisted of vichyssoise, spring asparagus, etc, etc.  [Here follows a detailed description of the table setting and it’s significance to the narrator.] After dinner, Francoise related the most charming story.  She was visiting her aunt and second husband at their country estate in the village of Dijon, but her aunt was depressed because nephew had a disagreeable discussion with his fiancée over the arrangements for their wedding, but they had since resolved their differences after talking to the aunt who. . . . .”

This goes on for about 1200 pages.  But should you decide to pick up this monstrosity of a book and you actually finish it?  Please send me a quick note and let me know how it turns out.

Meanwhile, things will turn out just fine if you come to either of my two back to back annual Xmas extravaganzas with VD King & Better Off Dead.  The way these gigs go is that we open up with a set of the usual Better Off Dead standards, but for the second set VD disappears and instead Santa Claus shows up and we do a set of Xmas themed rock & roll tunes.  But . . .  these are not your standard Xmas fare.  Instead you will be treated to songs like “All I Got for Christmas Was Drunk” and “Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’“. 

And once again I will humiliate myself and don an elf hat.

=======================
Friday December 17, 7:00PM -9:00PM
Better Off Dead at Ruthie’s BBQ
64 1/2 Chestnut Ave, Montclair, NJ  (973) 509-1134
Please note that Ruthie’s currently requires proof of vaccination to go inside.   Remember to BYO. 
http://www.betteroffdead.com/home.htm/
http://www.ruthiesbbq.com/

Saturday December 18,  9:00 PM – 1:00 AM
Better Off Dead at The Great Notch Inn
400 US-46, Woodland Park, NJ 07424(973) 256-7742
http://www.betteroffdead.com
https://www.facebook.com/Great-Notch-Inn-45741843010/

If you are a regular reader of the Sunday New York Times Book Review section, you will recognize this question.   Some well known person gets asked this question and they get to expound on various deep thoughts about literature.  Of course this is assuming that you have a night table and that there is even room on your night table for books.   I have the former but lack the later, so any books that I happen to be reading before zoning out end up on the floor.  In fact, said books are typically scattered about the house, and it takes me a while to find them – although not as long as it takes me to find my cell phone.

But I will endeavor to honor the spirit of the question.   What am I reading?  For starters let me tell you what I am not reading – pretty much anything published since, ummm…1950 or thereabouts (with exceptions to be noted).    This hostility to current literature stems from the fact that modern fiction writing is almost uniformly depressing.

Case in point – the short stories in The New Yorker.  We have a subscription to The New Yorker and every issue I try to read the short story.  I’ll get through the first few paragraphs and then I say to myself “This is gonna be a real downer” – and I skip to the cartoon contest at the end.  Now it would be unreasonable to expect every book to have a happy ending.  I’m OK with the occasional tragedy.    But this stuff is relentless.  If I want to be depressed all I need do is to turn on the evening news.

So what do I read?  For starters, the classics.  Last year I was on a Russian kick.  I went through most of Tolstoy, Crime & Punishment, Fathers & Sons, etc.  Do all of these have happy endings?  No, but somehow the fact that the events described happened 150 years ago makes it more bearable.  Plus I find it fascinating to read how people used to live.

Now I do make an exception for contemporary Science Fiction.  Most Sci-Fi stories end on a positive note.   On the downside, most Sci-Fi writing is pretty formulaic – evil bad guys are out to control the universe and lone outcast hero saves the day.   But there is a lot of very good writing out there as well and a lot of imaginative story telling.  I can recommend Ann Leckie & Martha Wells for starters.

Meanwhile, the “What’s on your night table” column typically finishes with the question “You’ve inviting 3 famous authors, dead or alive, to dinner.  Who are they?”   I dunno – maybe Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and Dave Barry?  Let me know who you’d invite and maybe I’ll print them next month.   

Meanwhile, I have no plans to sneak into your house and hover menacingly around your night table, but you can catch me this month in a rare NYC gig – and there is a concert with a new composition of mine.

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Saturday November 13th, 8:00PM -10:00PM
Dave Rudbarg at The Shrine,
Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard (7th Avenue), just below 134th Street, Manhattan, NY    (212) 690-7807
Dave Rudbarg is a powerhouse vocalist who has released several albums.  I will be backing up Dave and sharing the stage with some top notch musicians – Doug Greenberg on drums, Andy Fuchs on guitar, Steve Soltow on bass, and Wendy Haskin Meyer will join in on vocals.  The Shrine is a premier showcase venue in Harlem – there is no cover charge and I have it on good authority that the food is top notch.  As this is in NYC, all attendees must follow NYC health restrictions.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063610720802
https://www.shrinenyc.com/

Saturday November 20 – 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Composer’s Collective of New York at Tenri Cultural Institute
43 A West 13th Street, New York City
Exponential Ensemble (a collective of NYC based chamber musicians) will be premiering my new composition Short Story for Mixed Ensemble along with seven other new musical works by members of the Composer’s Collective of New York.  I know you likely hear this all the time, but the Tenri venue is quite intimate and seating is VERY limited.   Here is the link to buy tickets.   As this is in NYC, all attendees must follow NYC health restrictions.
https://www.exponentialensemble.com/
http://www.composerscollective.org/e.org/

I try to keep up with what’s happening in the world.  And there’s a lot to keep up with – politics, science, sports, foreign affairs, music, art, literature, etc, etc, etc.  One person can never keep track of it all – so you have to specialize – you have to pick and choose what is important to you and what you can give up paying attention to.   As for me, I’ve given up following sports.   OK, OK.  When the Olympics is on I may spend the odd hour watching curling or badminton, but unless there’s some major news event (like the gymnast who pulled out of some competitions) I quickly lose interest.

[Advance warning to folks who do not follow/understand sports: the rest of this post will contain sports jargon that will be largely unexplained]

This lack of interest goes way back to 1959.  That was the year the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to LA.  I got to be a Dodgers fan through my mother.  The Dodgers famously broke the color barrier and so all good liberals had to root for the “Da Bums”.   Plus my mom was from Brooklyn.  So when I read in the newspapers that the Dodgers were thinking about moving to LA, it was inconceivable to my 11 year old mind that such a thing could happen.  No way.  The sun rises in the east and sets in the west and the Dodgers are going to stay in Brooklyn – they’d work things out.

And then the unthinkable happened.   The Dodgers signed with LA and were gone.  This was a defining moment for me –  it was a revelation to my 11 year old psyche that bad stuff could happen in the world that would affect me personally.  But I didn’t let go all at once, I continued to root for them even though they had betrayed me.  The ’63 World Series was especially sweet – the Dodgers beat the hated Yankees 4 games to none – Sandy Koufax won games 1 & 4.  Yes!   

I actually got to see Koufax pitch a 4 hitter against the Mets.  Koufax’s curve ball was unreal.

But after Koufax retired in ’66, that was pretty much it for me.   I could never transfer my allegiance to the Mets – they were just a bunch of posers.  And rooting for the hated Yankees was unthinkable for a Dodgers fan.   Plus in 1966 I entered college and had more important things to pay attention to, ahem.

And that was almost it for following sports.  But not quite. . . .

In 1964 I got to see my first and only live professional football game – the NY Giants (that’s the football Giants, not the baseball Giants) – the game was played in the then baseball Giants stadium in New York (sorry non-sports fans out there – you’ll just have to bear with me).  This was Y.A. Tittle’s last season.  They were playing against the 49ers – I think the 49ers won.   So I became sort of a fair weather fan of the NY Giants (again that’s football not baseball for you non-sports people reading this).  Every September, I have this bizarre belief that the Giants will get into the Superbowl.  Usually this belief disappears by mid-October, but maybe once every 10-15 years the Giants actually make a run for it and I find myself watching a Giants game on a Sunday afternoon.  But then here’s the catch – it seems like whenever I turn on the TV in the middle of a game?  On the next play something bad will happen and the Giants end up losing.  It’s like my watching the game puts sort of a hex on them.

PostScript: Recommended reading for both sports & non-sports fans:  The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn.

===================================
Saturday October 30th, 9:00PM -1:00AM
Better Off Dead at Great Notch Inn,
400 US-46, Woodland Park, NJ 07424(973) 256-7742
I may put a hex on you if I don’t see you the night before Halloween at “Da Notch”.  I hate putting on costumes, but I will don some minimalist something or other so as not to be a complete party pooper.  Last year I used a wizard’s hat that my then preteen daughter used the last time she went trick or treating.  When was that Hannah?  1999? 2000?  2001?
http://www.betteroffdead.com
https://www.facebook.com/Great-Notch-Inn-45741843010/

Saturday November 13th, 8:00PM -10:00PM
Dave Rudbarg at The Shrine,
Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard (7th Avenue), just below 134th Street, Manhattan, NY  (212) 690-7807
Dave Rudbarg is a powerhouse vocalist who has released several albums.  I’m flattered that Dave has called on me to play at this premier showcase venue in Harlem.  I will be joined on stage by some top notch musicians – Glen Johnson on drums, Andy Fuchs on guitar, Steve Soltow on bass, and Wendy Haskin Meyer will join in on vocals.  As this is in NYC, all attendees must follow NYC health restrictions.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063610720802
https://www.shrinenyc.com/

Saturday November 20 – 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Composer’s Collective of New York at Tenri Cultural Institute
43 A West 13th Street, New York City
Exponential Ensemble (a collective of NYC based chamber musicians) will be premiering my new composition Short Story for Mixed Ensemble along with nine other new musical works by the composers in the Composer’s Collective of New York.  This concert was originally scheduled for last spring.  I do not have ticketing information available just yet, but seats will be very limited; if you want to attend, please get back to me and I will let you know as soon as this info available.   As this is in NYC, all attendees must follow NYC health restrictions.
https://www.exponentialensemble.com/
http://www.composerscollective.org/