The Portfolios

Had to force a post tonight – didn’t want February to slip by without another update. So what’s up with us? Well, top story is we’re getting really excited for our Thailand trip. The more I think about it, the more it sinks in how epic this is going to be. It’s basically a Shanghai reunion on a private tropical paradise. Jarrett and Candice are getting married, and people are dialing in from all over the world to make an appearance. America, China, England and even the UAE will all be represented. We are leaving two weeks from tomorrow and it can’t come soon enough. I even bought me some new boat shoes for the trip – damn, ain’t nothin’ like some new boat shoes!

I’ve started a redesign of PortfolioFamily.com, but due to some other web commitments I’ve made, it’s gonna be awhile before I have a chance to get back around to it. I promised my dad almost a year ago that I’d put a site together for his business – he’s a doctor, an ophthalmologist, so he’s a lifesaver for your eyes. He does laser surgery and lots of other stuff, all types of eye surgery and everything else all the way down to just figuring out what kind of prescription you need for your glasses. A couple months ago I woke up with a nasty pain in my eye and I called him, and he was like, well, you might have a corneal scratch or you might have an ulcer, I can get you some drops but do you have insurance? Cause they’re gonna be like a hundred bucks – I mean, I could just give you some if you were here but you’re at work. I said, well what do you think? How about I just wait till later this afternoon and I’ll come over and get some? And he said – and this is how I knew it was serious because my dad is always – always – totally cool about the situation, playing it down – he said, well, if you’ve got an ulcer then I’d wanna jump all over it. So he phoned it in to the pharmacy across the street from my office and I paid fifty bucks and had the drops within 20 minutes, and my eye was fine by the end of the day. Problem solved. That’s the advantage of having a doctor for a dad – and I’ve loved being a doctor’s kid my whole life.

So you would think I would have built the damn site by now, but no – I’ve totally slacked on it. In fact, the domain is coming up for renewal, so it’s been a year. Pathetic. My goal is to get this thing out of the way before I get to Thailand – in fact, I should be able to do it faster.

Then I’ve got a site I’m building for Xianyi, for a super top-secret site she’s planned out for herself which I can’t tell anyone about yet cause it’s so fresh and so clean. But it’s gonna kill.

And then I’m helping Aunt Jennifer build her professional site cause she’s reached a point in her business where people are asking where she is online and she has no answer, so we came to an arrangement to trade services. She is a master of the Alexander Technique, which is a system for relieving stress and tension in the body by practicing proper posture. Lord knows I need some of that with my chronic cubicle cramps. It’s hard being a corporate warrior.

I’m getting excited about golf again as the season approaches. Tiger made his return to the game after an 8-month break for injury. He wasn’t too stellar: he beat a no-name in the first round of the Match Play WGCs, then lost to Tim Clark, a decent but not incredible Englishman South African. But I’m getting the bug again. It’s funny how my ardent love for golf really does die for a few months each year – I guess the weather has a major impact on it. But maybe I just need a few months off every year. Anyway, I’m bringing my clubs to Thailand.

We watched the Oscars earlier this week and though most of the winners were easy calls, the show was a good one. I liked the feature of having five previous winners come out and give speeches about the nominees, because it put a little more emphasis than usual on the worthiness of nomination. Although there were some backfiring moments, like when Adrian Brody said, “If you Google the resume of Richard Jenkins you’ll find he’s done over 60 films…” – Google the resume? Did it feel unseemly to anyone else that he threw Google in there? Oh, and the dancing numbers were lame, especially the one with Beyoncé, which was a total waste of her voice. Though it was better than “Single Ladies,” a song I hate with a singular passion.

UPDATE: Let me not forget Wrisley’s follow-up to the Oscars, his live report from the very slum of Slumdog!

Xianyi and I celebrated our anniversary in style. We checked off one of the city’s landmarks from our must-see list by heading to Carnegie Hall. In our typical fashion, we arrived just in time, scooting into our seats just before the conductor took the stage.

The Cleveland Orchestra was not what I had in mind when I went looking for tickets to the symphony – no offense to Tristan, but Cleveland is not the first city that comes to mind in that department. But I give respect where it’s due; they put on a very strong performance. The first piece was a Mozart symphony (No. 25 in G minor), which was nice, but the second piece, Debussy’s Nocturnes, was outstanding. It brought together all the elements of a beautiful symphonic piece, the grand crescendos, the deafening silence, and all the unique sounds that you don’t get from pop music. There was one point where I was scanning the stage to find the soloing oboist.

Unfortunately the last piece was a real downer, Janácek’s Slavonic Mass. Talk about a snoozer. I couldn’t dig the melody, couldn’t even find the rhythm. I ended up dozing off in the middle of it, a trick I must have picked up from my dad, who in the old days could be counted on to fall asleep before the end of the overture when we used to go see the Nutcracker.

I managed to rouse myself towards the end of the Sanctus and we watched the conductor and the four soloists take several more curtain calls than I thought necessary. We lingered while people filed out and then walked down to the edge of the level we were sitting on, the Dress Circle, and had a look around. Carnegie Hall is truly a majestic theater, a testament to the ages. As we stood there taking it in, nearly alone in its hallowed warmth, it struck me that that is exactly what I want this marriage, this love, to be.

The Black Keys at Terminal Five

Thanks to Jeremy’s foresight, I was at Terminal Five last night rocking to the Black Keys. What a show!

Jeremy asked me back in November whether I wanted to go to this show, and he got the tickets well ahead of time. It ended up sold out, for good reason. These guys absolutely rock. Just two of them, guitarist-vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney, make this incredibly full, vibrant sound that reaches directly into your gut. Very powerful stuff.

Before the show, we met at a tavern near Jeremy’s apartment. Along for the night was Uncle Stu, whom Jeremy refers to as Disco Stu, playing on Stu’s hatred of disco. The three of us set out for Terminal Five, a relatively new venue on the west side. The place is huge, and can fit 3,000 people. The show was sold out, so I guess that’s how many heads were filling up the joint. Down on the floor you could not get far even when the opening act was just starting.

That act was the Heartless Bastards, out of Memphis. Their style can be described as white trailer trash rock. The singer was a grumbler, and I didn’t get into the music at all. But they clearly had a lot of fans in the place, including a tall black woman next to us who was jumping with the music and singing every word. I asked her about them in between songs and got a little background info that may have made me more sympathetic to them, because by the last song – which was a solo by the singer, accompanying himself on guitar, I was applauding without irony or disdain.

There was a long pause before the main act came out, and it was fun to see some college dudes acting the part near us, totally excited to be out at the show, experiencing the city. Despite the harsh patting down all received at the door, reefer smoke was all around, and security was not going around cracking skulls as they are prone to do in many venues. Of course, when there’s three thousand people on the floor, you can’t really walk around policing them.

I started a couple of chants in the interim while we got impatient, and the college dudes were a great help here. I simply started in near one of them, “Let’s GO! Let’s GO! Let’s GO” and he and his buddies took over from there. I did it again with “Black KEYS! Black KEYS!” and I feel that this overt display of desire was one of the primary signs that the boys backstage were looking for in order to come out, so I’m glad of the small part I played in the evening’s activities. If you think I’m full of myself, well, there’s lots of other blogs on the internets you could be reading right now…

My skillz were strong again towards the end of the show when I suddenly said to Jeremy, “Let’s get our coats.” It proved prescient as we avoided a mile-long line that formed as soon as we’d got them.

What happened in between was your standard rock and roll show, with the lights, the blur, and the pure noise briefly rendering a gangly mass of beings into one shining, swaying organism, steadfast against the void.