City Block

Summer, past 10:00 and still the sun’s warmth emanates from the sidewalk

Generations speak on the steps of knowledge

Trees older than buildings but far out numbered

Street lamps illuminate just as the sun does minutes before dawn

Peaceful, Waldenesque scenes in the middle of Astoria Queens

To Have Once Loved

So fully as to never forget
Her Touch
Her Smell
Her Taste
So that what was once infused can never be totally removed
Two as one as two

You Know it's Bad

when you need another shower before you even hop on the train to go to work. I don't mind the sweltering, sweating, dripping, oozing, oppressing heat so much as I mind being in a collared dress shirt in the sweltering, sweating, dripping, oozing, oppressing heat. Last night we jammed into the morning, good turn out and even better grooves. Now I'm at work unwilling to do the word justice and recovering from too little sleep and too many brews. I normally just take straight up coffee but today I had to go with a red eye, here's hoping I don't fall asleep at my desk.

Sweet Kisses

Your Infamy Lives Within Me
A Sheltered Faith Shattered

Comfort Music

There are bands/artists that I listen to one I just want to listen to something that I listened to when I was amidst turmoil but the dust cleared. For this I listen to Ari Hest, Hootie and the Blowfish (Cracked Rear View), Green Day (Dookie), Good Charlotte (The Young the Hopeless), Third Eye Blind ( Both Third Eye Blind and Out of the Vein) Smashing Pumpkins (Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness) These albums are the hallmark of music that I can just lose myself in for a while, I know the melodies, harmonies and even pick up beats so well that I can just entire cease thinking and look out the window and remember a similar time in my life when things were up in the air and they ended up alright, more or less.

Myspace Customer Support Sucks

I've been trying to get an email verification from these idiots for the last two weeks. And all I get is automated emails in return, which would be fine if the replies I sent were actually read by human beings, but they're not so I keep get the same emails without anything ever changing, does anybody have the # to their customer support office, if you do please post as comment on blog.
To about 65 email verification code requests and email change requests so that I could get a verification code I've gotten four dismal responses.

From:	"Other"
To:	sean@cyderobin.com
Date:	08 Jun 2007, 01:09:05 PM
Subject:	MySpace - Verification Code

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Customer Support at MySpace.com

If you are having trouble with entering your verification code, you might try the following:

• Use all lower case letters

• Do not use a space between any of the letters

• Press each key carefully and individually

• Watch out for the letters “v”, “x” and “y”.

Hope this helps!

For the most up to date messages about MySpace, subscribe to the MySpace Help blog! You get updates almost every day! Go here to subscribe.

Thank you,

MySpace.com

From:	"EmailFilterVerification"
To:	sean@cyderobin.com
Date:	12 Jun 2007, 12:21:01 AM
Subject:	MySpace - Change Email Address

From:	"EmailFilterVerification"
To:	sean@cyderobin.com
Date:	12 Jun 2007, 12:21:01 AM
Subject:	MySpace - Change Email Address

---

HTML content follows

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Customer Support at MySpace.com

To help us change your email address, please provide the following information:

Old MySpace Email/log in Address:

New MySpace Email/log in Address:

MySpace Password (we use this to verify your identity. If you are uncomfortable sending us your password, you may also send us a salute instead):

or

Salute: A current photo of yourself holding a handwritten sign containing your friend ID. The friend ID is located on your web address bar while viewing your profile.

Link: A link to your site (friend ID or URL) would be extremely helpful. Sometimes there is an error in the email/log in address and we will not be able to locate your account and help you.

If this does not address your issue completely, please press "Reply" and provide any additional information you feel is relevant.

For the most up to date messages about MySpace, subscribe to the MySpace Help blog! You get updates almost every day! Go here to subscribe.

www.myspace.com/myspacehelp

Hope this helps!

Thank you,
MySpace.com

From:	"MySpace Contact1"
To:	sean@cyderobin.com
Date:	14 Jun 2007, 01:57:32 PM
Subject:	MySpace - Verification Code Reply

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Customer Support at MySpace.com

If you are having trouble with entering your verification code, you might try the following:

• Use all lower case letters

• Do not use a space between any of the letters

• Press each key carefully and individually

• Watch out for the letters “v”, “x” and “y”.

If you find that the html for your background is missing, it may have been removed because of faulty coding or there was a violation of the Terms of Service. Please be careful pressing links from strangers and do not use inappropriate images.

If this does not address your issue completely, please press "Reply" and provide any additional information you feel is relevant.

For the most up to date messages about MySpace, subscribe to the MySpace Help blog! You get updates almost every day! Go here to subscribe.

www.myspace.com/myspacehelp

Hope this helps!

Thank you,
MySpace.com

From:	"EmailFilterVerification"
To:	sean@cyderobin.com
Date:	14 Jun 2007, 06:00:59 PM
Subject:	MySpace - Change Email Address

---

HTML content follows

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Customer Support at MySpace.com

To help us change your email address, please provide the following information:

Old MySpace Email/log in Address:

New MySpace Email/log in Address:

MySpace Password (we use this to verify your identity. If you are uncomfortable sending us your password, you may also send us a salute instead):

or

Salute: A current photo of yourself holding a handwritten sign containing your friend ID. The friend ID is located on your web address bar while viewing your profile.

Link: A link to your site (friend ID or URL) would be extremely helpful. Sometimes there is an error in the email/log in address and we will not be able to locate your account and help you.

If this does not address your issue completely, please press "Reply" and provide any additional information you feel is relevant.

For the most up to date messages about MySpace, subscribe to the MySpace Help blog! You get updates almost every day! Go here to subscribe.

www.myspace.com/myspacehelp

Hope this helps!

Thank you,
MySpace.com

Rehearsing

Mark and I got to rehearse a good hour and a half or so, felt good to just be playing music again, looking forward to the weekend and next weeks' gig. I love going to bed at a decent time on Friday because it opens up the whole weekend. The worst is when you drink too much on Friday night, end up suffering all day Saturday and then by Saturday night you're just recovering but no desire to go out remains, so you crash then it's already Sunday. Looking so forward to that coffee in the morning, heck maybe I'll make it Irish.

Some Day I'll smoke that cigar

in Bryant Park. It is one of the few places where you can smell the aroma of cigar smoking wistfully floating by you as you walk around the chess boards or look upon the lawn. That and Nat Sherman's on the corner so you know most of those cigars have just been purchased by their lucky guardian, no humidor for these stogies. I think perhaps when I get the chance to leave my current job and set off on some tour with my band, then I'll smoke a fine cigar to bid a fond adieu to my lunch time utopia. It is Firday once again, can't you tell by my euphoric tone, and that means all that stands in the way of me and freedom is two and half paltry hours. Though the weekend should be a fairly busy one, filled hopefully with rehearsing for our upcoming show, Saturday morning will be my refuge from the practicing and I will sit in the empty Starbucks on Steinway sipping my coffee and day dreaming while my eyes wander to and from the street outside. Perhaps I'll get a chance to chill with Blake more too, which would be a nice change of pace. There is something about friends you've known since middle school that allows you to cut the bs. No need to try to be cute in conversation or ask them how their life is progressing. No need for pleasentries or civlity, just relaxing drinking a beer watching the game, enough said. I just finished reading Miles, the autobiography of Miles Davis. It is a fabulous read and I recommend it to all those interested in music and jazz specifically. I love the attitude the guy had, although a lot of the things he might have done were questionable, he did everything with style and confidence that came from sticking to his own guns even if meant pissing everyone off. Now that type of character is rare these days, when everybody is so pc and cordial that you don't know how anybody really feels. The passion has gone out of conversation because it has become so sanitized. His exuberance for music, women and life where his hallmarks. I leave you with brief quote of his on the nature of Jazz and jazz musicains "you need more than that (great technical skills and technique) to play great jazz music, you need feelings and an understanding of life that you can only get from living, from experience"

And then there was 1

The problem with having more than one person involved in any venture is that interests and schedules seldom align in such a way that resources (time and creativity) are best utilized. If many of the great thinkers, painters, scientists and musicians had to wait around for another half then they may have never have accomplished anything. Yet on the other side of the coin we have great accomplishments made by teams or groups working together whose success was never again matched once they disbanded and went their own separate ways. I guess the question to ask oneself is, where do your highest chances for success lie.

Cloudy NYC Day

It's cool and cloudy in NYC today. The many people on the streets scurry just a bit faster and do not wander aimlessly in sunny rays of mirth. Ah it is Wednesday as well which means only two more days to go before the holy grail that is the Weekend returns in prophesied glory. Tonight, for those of you who read this blog regularly already know, is jam night. This always seems to put a spring in my step and a smile on my face , for it is the "most wonderful day of the week" (sing as Christmas carol to get full effect) All around me spring has sprung its relationships forth, my brother has a new gal in his life and Ken has, well let's keep it undefined but at least it be something. I have my bass, which is alright by me for now for it will lead to greener pastures I'm sure (yet whether that be artistically or romantically I'm less sure)

Too Tired to Clean

Not likely I've really done anything tiring today but there you have it. At least tomorrow is Wednesday which means Jam Night. Always a cause for hope in a world of ties and copiers. I think I'll go to sleep early just because I never do that unless I've had far too much to drink. Today I worked, read and played bass with periods of eating and cursing mixed in, not a bad day. I love 8 in the morning, I usually feel so relaxed then where as by 5:30 when I emerge perspiring from the R stop at Steinway Street, I am usually quite angst ridden and by 10:00 pm I'm too tired to be a go getter. I love 8 AM because there are still so many possibilities for the day.

Smile

Those of you who know me know that my proclivity for smiling, well simply doesn't exist. Now I might of smiled more when I was a youngter but these days I smile, truly smile from unabashed joy, quite rarely. Yet I find myself in an office working the front desk which means I'm the first face many people see when they enter the office, yes I can't help but smirk a bit from the irony of that statement, and as such I need to be upbeat and happy. Now most of you then see me when I return to Queens after a long day of smiling and nodding and wonder why I look so exhausted and like I'm about to "die" or "faint" Well you see I think it has to do with this act I have to do all day, not that I'm by nature an unhappy person, rather I like to keep my moods to myself I think I need to work on being pleasant and not smiley because this smiley thing is absolutely tiring.

The Myth of Adulthood

Almost 1:00 and no more work to do. Which is good because I was out till 2:00 am last night having drinks with Blake, Ken and Mark at the Black Bear in SoNo. I was the DD which meant I only had a beer and therefore when I found myself lost in the middle of Norwalk I had no excuse. Blake recently got back from his third tour in Iraq, he's now Sgt. in the Marines, which sounds so very adult and got be thinking about this idea of growing up. The one thing that seems to necessitate "growing" up is the arrival of infants in your life, aside from this bouncing event the delineations are not so clear. Perhaps it is your first houese, the death of your parents or your first real job that ushers you into this club. I know that leaving my first real job seems to have offered me more in the way of growing up than all my time working. The uncertainty of what to do with life remains trhoughout one's time here but perhaps the options appear to be less plausible at a given point and with this narrowed persepective we get "Practical". What an awful word, it means that you do something you don't want to do because it makes more sense in the grander scheme of your life, but that doesn't change the fact that whatever that Practical choice may be it is in fact self denying. I don't think it hits all at once , adulthood that is, I think it is a series of small choices that lead to a different world view and value priority alignment than one had held previously in one's youth. But perhaps that is too harsh, it may be the reiteration of a worldview too, and in that confirmation of our own sense of being we find that we have been on the right track all along. God knows I wouldn't want to be 12 again nor 17 or even 21. That doesn't mean that those ages didn't hold things that I wish I possessed now, like no rent and more gall. I quote the Beatles "when I was younger so much younger than today, I never needed anybodies help in anyway but now those days are gone and I'm not so self assured" Here's to an ever evolving sense of adulthood in whatever form that it may take.

Friday Again

Which means music in Bryant Park once again, this time it was a performance by Robin Thicke, who pulls of the falsetto beautifully and worked the women in the crowd to quite a fever pitch. So glad it is Friday. Looking forward to a long train ride back to CT with a Fosters in my hand and a song in my heart. Ain't I sweet. Been digging the sound I'm getting out of my new Fender Fretless Bass, it adds a thump sound to the groove which is what I really enjoy. Listening to a lot of bebop stuff with a CD Jazz at Massey Hall '53 being my new repeat album. It has Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Bud Powell, and of course the famed bass player Mr. Charlie Mingus. It's been a fun musical journey lately, I've been hitting up some of the funk stylings of Curtis Mayfield and Sly and the Family Stone then hitting the Jazz Giants all the while trying to incorporate that into a Rock band groove and I say groove because that is what I love most about those guys they can really envelop the audience with rhythm or a riff that just is incendiary and people leave feeling emotionally and physically spent.

So....

Mark and I managed to get our demo done and now for the first time in two years we have music to share with our friends once again. A good feeling to be sure. Today was one of those gorgeous days that remind you how good it is to be 24 in NYC. Bryant Park is full of the most beautiful women around and it's Thursday. Right now I'm chilling listening to some Thelonious Monk and enjoying having had a fairly productive stretch, which means I'm now being a bit of a lazy bum. I'm working with the managers of a few local Starbucks to try to get little artist showcases going, which would be great in that it would give Mark and I a venue for playing that is right in our own back yard while also allowing our friends a place to test their skills too. I'm hoping to have each set be around 25 minutes, the 10 minutes at open mics are never really sufficient to get into a groove. One of my oldest friends is getting back into town this weekend and his parents are throwing him a welcome back bbq, he's a marine and has put in three tours of duty in Iraq already. It's crazy how different life can be for two kids who grew up in the same town. I'm doing the whole artist NYC thing and he's off fighting in foreign lands. Psyched to see him again. What a beautiful spring day this has been, and in a bit I'll catch some of the Cavs/Spurs game while drinking a Corona. Life is mellow shade of yellow.

Saturday Fun

This last weekend was a blast, too bad it's only Tuesday now. On Saturday I had a jammed packed day of fun, saw the film Knocked Up, which I highly recommend on account of its wonderful use of dirty language and character development that mirrors real life. That and Katherine Heigl is wonderful to watch for any length of time. After this I got to go see one of my favorite bass players, Les Claypool, rock out Nokia Theater in Times Sq. till 12:30 in the morning. The scene was a throw back to an earlier era, with whiffs of sweet smelling smoke drifting up from the packed theater and beautiful women dance the whole night through, and not the hip hop grinding style either but that joyful Dead/flower child type of dance that flows effortlessly from the music. Les himself was amazing, doing some stuff on a six string fretless bass that I did not think where possible with a bass guitar. He's such a great performer and entertainer; he had the whole crowd eating out of the palm of his hand. After the show let out at my brother and I made are way back to Astoria to attend our friend Renata's "Goodbye to Starbucks" gala, in which she bids a long overdue adieu to the "Magical Land of Coffee". Doyles Corner was fairly packed for a 2:00 on a Saturday night so I and a few others made our way over to Crehans on 31st Ave to enjoy a few beers with out the hindrance to speech that always accompanies Karaoke Night at Doyles. Sunday was lazy and Monday and Friday both saw a fair amount of recording done which is good because Mark and I need to have our demo done by tomorrow. Here's to sleepy Tuesday mornings that allow for too much blogging.

Rain and Errands

Staring at the rain
Through the window of a parked car
Waiting for my mother to return
Solemn day dreams play within my head
A feeling of wistful peace surrounds me
I hope it thunders
Then this moment would be complete

Music in the Park/Investment Talk

I am becoming more and more a fan of Good Morning America, this morning they sponsored a brief concert by Daughtry and two weeks ago they had Rascal Flatts performing, it's nice to enjoy the last few sips of my morning coffee under the auspicious sky over Bryant Park at 8:40 in the morning. It just starts the day off on the right note. Plus it is Friday the glory of all days, the jobs report came out today and saying that we added 157K jobs to the payrolls this month which puts our unemployment rate at a nice little 4.5%, under what many economists believe to be "Full Employment" which means that the economy is most likely in good shape despite what the GDP revision downward yesterday might have us believe. So for those of you who own any broad index funds this should be a happy, even more so with the Core PCE Deflator coming in at .1% under consensus estimates of up .2%. The reason I bring these weighty matters up on a beautiful Friday morning is because part of my dream of living a laid back life is to live frugally enough to save a good portion of my funds so that one day I too could retire to a life of leisure, albeit if only a meager on, and live off the profits of my portfolio. I happen to favor broad based index funds that allow even the laziest amongst us to receive the markets returns. Now I know some of you will speak up about the rewards of being an active investor, you'll most likely to pristine examples of stock picking prowess like Warren Buffett, Bill Miller, Peter Lynch or active traders like George Soros and Stevie Cohen but one must remember that these titans of Wall St. work very very very long hours and who wants to do that. Hedgefund.net, which tracks the returns of 4823 actively managed hedge funds reported that hedge fund returned a whopping 11.9% to their investors last year, not bad but still not beating the 12.8% return of the S&P 500 which any Joe off the street could have purchased via an index fund. I myself am partial to Fidelity's four-in-one index fund, it allows you to invest in 4 broad indices, with a fund allocation of 55% S&P, 15% International, 15% Extended Market (smaller cap equities) and 15% US Treasuries. How about that diversification at the click of a button and it has no load and an expense ratio of under 10 basis points (.1%). So for those of us who can learn to save and live within our means, we are able to achieve similar returns to the Wall St big shots without having to do any of the work. There you have it democracy in action.