Tag Archives: advice

Dear Aliens

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You’re going to want to eat some ice cream during your visit. Trust me. There are all kinds of variations so go to a big shop. Baskin Robbins is fine. No need to be too precious about it your first time. Everything gets complicated fast enough. Basically it’s milk that’s been churned and chilled, almost but not entirely frozen. The process has something to do with rock salt? Doesn’t matter. You’ll like it. It’s made with milk, which comes from cows’ titties, believe it or not. You might encounter sci-fi, milk-like substances such as oat milk or almond milk. Avoid this stuff. This is computer food designed by dorks. Go for the real mammalian hit if you’re going to try it.

Important note: ice cream melts, so be about it. The hotter it is, etc. It’s compulsively transitory, qua substance. This somehow makes it better, like life itself.

But then you will probably see something called soft serve ice cream. This is also ice cream but just, well, softer. It gets ejected from a spigot rather than scooped from a bucket. So not as thick. The way you lick it is subtly but definitively different. You can get this at places like McDonald’s and sometimes it has toppings. Easily confusable with yogurt, also known as frozen yogurt, which is not the same as real yogurt.

See? Complicated. Real yogurt is made with bacteria cultures and milk. It occupies the same liminal, mouthfeel space in that you don’t really have to chew it. But frozen yogurt is basically soft serve ice cream without it actually being yogurt. I think it was basically a psyop by Big Yogurt back in the day to get people acclimated to the idea of yogurt, meaning regular, tangy, wholesome-but-not-really-dessert yogurt. Frozen yogurt also comes with lots of toppings. Generally speaking, the more toppings that are available, the less fancy the version of ice cream. Those people are just lipsticking the pig.

Then there is custard, which where I’m from we treat with suspicion. It’s made with eggs. These get pooped out by chickens daily, and we turn them into all kinds of stuff. That’s a whole other letter but they’re also weirdly liminal and creepy but still, somehow, delicious. Life here is weird. Custard is made with these but is still gross. It leaves a sticky film in your throat. But then sometimes ice cream doesn’t have hardly any milk or eggs at all and it’s called sherbert, and it’s mostly fruit and always pastel-colored. It’s like ice cream’s preppy, New England cousin. It’s also delicious, very rarely served with toppings, and springier. But then get ready because there’s also sorbet, which is like sherbert’s preppy cousin who’s been abroad for an entire year and is impossibly smug about it. I don’t think it contains any milk at all; it’s transcended it. Also lots of fruit, no toppings, and usually expensive. If they’ve got sorbet on the menu, ask a local to cover the bill.

But then also you might get a milkshake, which is like even softer serve ice cream. As in you don’t even lick it. You drink it through a straw. If you get it in a restaurant, you might get an additional spoon to scoop out the innards, complicating matters further. Quick logistical note: if it comes in a cone, you’re supposed to lick it. If it comes in a cup, you’re supposed to scoop it with a spoon, unless it comes in a long cup and then you’re supposed to drink it from a straw. A milkshake is just ice cream with even more milk so that it gets swampy and, yes, drinkable. Though sometimes it’s just barely drinkable and this is somehow a sign of its excellence. There are flavors here, and sometimes toppings, but they’re not really toppings. They’re in the ice cream swamp itself. Example: Chik-Fil-A peach milk shakes, but act fast because that one is seasonal and remember they’re closed on Sunday. Real proud of that little middle finger to all the pagans.

Alert: an ice cream sandwich is not actually a sandwich. It’s ice cream that uses a cookie as a containment mechanism. But you eat it like a sandwich. Honestly, if you’re looking for something to skip, this is the one.

But if you go to a Dairy Queen, you can get a trad milk shake, but also you can get a Blizzard, which is their proprietary milkshake-like concoction that’s even thicker and comes with chopped-up candy bars inside. Or cookies. You get the idea. These are a little sus and are mostly the terrain of adolescents and adults who have given up on life. They should put a diabetes warning on those bad boys. And then if you go into a gas station you can also get almost edible drinks, like a Slushy which is a fruit-flavored, chunky ice drink that will stain your tongue. More fruit flavors but not like sorbet sophisticated real fruit but like lab-grown, ultramarine alien blue flavors. No offense. Also sometimes at the gas station are the Icee machines which are basically Slushies but cola-flavored and, to my discriminating palate, much better. These are ingested through a straw but a special straw that sports a tiny spoonlet on the end so that you can scoop out those truant half dozen ice nugget crunchers at the bottom.

A Frappacino is just a coffee-flavored milkshake that costs more and comes with a line. A smoothie is just a milkshake that’s pretending to be healthy. Gelato is just Italian sorbet — sorbet’s sketchier, sluttier cousin. You will have a good time with gelato.

While you’re here, lots of people are going to tell you that they’re the real ones in charge. Be that as it may seem, it’s important to remember what one of our best rappers said about all this: the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

The website Quarter Mile held a contest for letters to send to the aliens, should they ever arrive. This was my entry. No, I did not win.

How to rehearse

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Rehearsals should have a goal, an agenda, a rationale, a structure, a limit, a path, a focus, a boss, a point. What’s the point of this rehearsal? is always a pertinent question, if slightly rude.

Perhaps everyone already knows this, but my experience points otherwise.

Is it a rehearsal or is it a hang? A hang is a perfectly good thing, but one should be clear about the goal. If it’s a rehearsal, what is it for? What are you rehearsing? Are you trying to get ready for a specific gig? Are you trying to work out the arrangements of new material, who plays the head, how the groove is going to lay, what happens with the bridge? Are you rehearsing as a proof-of-concept? For instance, a new group of people meeting and running through some stuff to see if it gels, if it’s feasible — if it sounds terrible and everyone wants to punch themselves after an hour. These are all valid reasons for a rehearsal, goals for a rehearsal, but my point is that the goals should be stated and held to. The goals should be explicit. Everyone should show up knowing the stakes.

What a rehearsal is not for is for everyone to practice their soloing. There is no greater corrosion of the spirit than playing a song under the auspices of preparing for a performance while everyone goes through the full Skynyrd. This is an indulgence and a waste of everyone’s time. Solos should be practiced alone at home in the dark. That’s your personal woodshedding time. Like a magic trick, its recipe should never be revealed. I suppose the theater kid analogy would be: learn your lines at home.

A couple of years back there was that Peter Jackson multi-hour documentary of the Beatles, showing them working on Let it Be. I’ve only seen a few clips. (I adore the Beatles, but who has that kind of free time?) Even in those fleeting reels I would notice Ringo sitting behind the kit, arms folded, waiting for his bandmates to get their shit together. It’s the curse of drummers everywhere, sitting quietly while the other band members teach each other the song, or write the song, or simply do work that should have been done beforehand. That’s why Ringo is a great drummer, because he sits there patiently and doesn’t go after Paul and John with a machete. Learn the songs before you get to rehearsal. I am trying not to yell. It’s like a potluck. Don’t show up unless you have a dish ready. Rehearsal is the time for getting individual components together for a performance.

How do you get it together? You practice the intros, the outros, and the head, and you note any special arrangement details. You don’t even need to play the whole song. A song by definition has sections that repeat. You don’t need to play all the verses in rehearsal. If you need practice singing all those verses, do that at home with your soloing practice. You certainly don’t need to let every horn player scrimmage over that spot where the half-diminished chord jumps out of the bushes.

And not to sound all corporate on you, but people shouldn’t cross the threshold without a clear agenda. In this rehearsal we are going to run through the intros and heads to ten songs we need to play tomorrow night. In this rehearsal we are going to work up the arrangements for four new tunes. “Work up” and “run through” are different concepts, demand different metabolisms. Working up a tune is like barn raising: in the morning there was no song, but at the end of the day, there it stood. Run through means the arrangement already exists but the band is going to confirm the details: the tempo, the groove, the key, the order of events.

But sometimes you do want to solo. You want everyone to solo in the seclusion of a non-performance safe space. You want to vibe. But that is not a rehearsal. That is a jam. Another perfectly viable form of musical collaboration, though to be sure one that’s ripe for abuse. I’ve lost count of the number of bands I’ve been in that could jam the afternoon away but could not effectuate a performance. Jamming has no parameters placed upon it, except perhaps the limits of the band members’ bladders or their girlfriends’ patience.

Most important, a rehearsal is not a performance. It’s the preparation for a performance. It’s not even a scrimmage. I knew a singer who would blow out her voice in rehearsal the day before a gig. This defeats the purpose.

Rule of thumb: if there is beer, it’s most likely a hang. Which is fine. I like hanging out with friends. I do have friends! I am trying not to yell. But the point is you should have clear expectations.

Also, as a rule, rehearsals should not last longer than two hours. Really, I think 90 minutes should be the max. It’s hard to stay focused for that long, and people are busy. Plus the restricted time window cuts down on the mayonnaise effect, asking about how everyone’s holiday went, what their kids got, all that. That’s hang talk. You want to visit, then swap spit in the parking lot afterward. Right now, we’re running through the song list. Everything in life could be shorter: movies, meetings, rehearsals, concerts, podcasts, even blog posts.

Another rule of thumb, there should be a boss, whether elected or not. Perhaps it’s just the pushiest person in the room. The bitchy wheel gets the grease, etc. But left without a leader, collective indecision will mutate the rehearsal into a hang. Whoever establishes the agenda is the de facto boss. Embrace being the boss. Tell people what to do. Like dogs, they will be silently grateful. They will thank you with their eyes.