Rights and What's Right
Current mood: contemplative

I am putting together some essays to submit to NPR. That is one of my goals in life. And below is one that wrote on an event from when I was college. Unfortunately, like many of my pieces, it is hard to find an ending. I could use your feedback as to what information you might want to know. That might present a way for me to wrap it up. Thanks in advance.


RIGHTS AND WHAT'S RIGHT
By Asaf Ronen

When I happened upon the attempted rape, I was, ironically enough, on my way to a Women's Rights March. I would not have even known about it happening if there wasn't an attempt to rope me into the act.

In college, I signed up for activities, piled up on them in fact. I was a member of the English Club and ran for it a year near the end of my academic "career" at CUNY Queens College. I contributed and eventually became editor of Pandemonium, the literary magazine and was involved with the school newspaper. I did work with the New York Public Interest Research Group, went along on Earth Day activities and straphangers causes. I helped start an improv comedy troupe called Newmyn's Nose, sneaking into the theater once a week for rehearsals. I hung out with the punks in the Progressive Student Union. I even got involved with the Womyn's Center. I figured, what the hell, it was a good way to meet Womyn.

That was how I signed up for the trip to Washington, D.C. to participate in one of the biggest marches for Women's Rights ever. There was a bus that was leaving from the Student Union achingly early at 5 a.m. on Sunday morning to take people there. I was hoping to sit next to a girl I was crushing on at the time.

Luckily, at the time, I was still living at home and my mother's house was a short walking distance from the campus. Even with the fact that we were springing forward because of daylight savings time that night, I was still able to wake up half an hour before departure. Dressed and amazingly awake, I made my way the few blocks to Main Street which was dead so I didn't have to bother waiting for the light. That put me on the big block where the campus was located, the Student Union located at the corner on the far diagonal from me. I continued along the edge of the campus, specifically where the baseball field was located, passing on my right, followed by a grass field where the lacrosse team played, though it was by no means a proper lacrosse field. To my left was a row of houses, including the Simmons house, where Matthew lived, he was my friend and tormentor in elementary school. I had my yellow Sportsman on, playing a cassette of U2's The Joshua Tree.

As I was walking along, I saw a car parked on my side of the street. There was a couple in the front seat making out. They were obviously out after a long date, made later by the Daylight Savings. The voyeur in me stared a little too long, but I did not break my stride. Even when I saw the same car sidling up beside me, I did not break my stride. The driver was trying to get my attention, but I could not hear him over "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". I cautiously pulled back my headphones.

"Two on one?" he asks.

"Excuse me?" I have now stopped in my tracks.

"Two on one? She's pretty drunk."

I look at the girl he is referring too who is passed out in the reclined passenger side. She has nothing covering her top. She is not moving. He is hanging over her with one hand on her door, ready to let me in. He reminds me of an etching Goya did of a succubus where it is crouched atop a naked woman's chest.

"No, thank you." I keep on moving. I put my headphones back on. I have no idea how this guy might feel about being rejected. I think I see the car peel away to my left. I pick it up a little bit longer until I reach the hole in the fence that is located between the lacrosse field and the gymnasium. I crawl through and I start running. I am cutting that diagonal across the quad as fast as I can, but I am out of shape so my speed fluctuates. My headphones have flopped down and I don't bother shutting my tape player off. And the quad is dark and ominous. And I finally reach the Student Union and the crowd that is waiting for the bus. There is no hole on this side, I suddenly remember and I feel foolish.

"I think," I am trying to get the words out, but my body wants some time to catch a breath. "I think there is a rape going on." I bullet point all the key words: car, girl, drunk, topless, rape. Someone makes a run for the phone to call the police. I am in a stupor, in shock, and standing by myself on one side of a very tall fence. I am going to have to find a way around to the safety of the others.

The police come and ask questions that make me feel more and more foolish. I cannot quite tell what brand of car it was, only the color and how many doors. I did not think to get the license plate number. They drove around the neighborhood a couple of times and did not find anyone parked. Some are theorizing that the guy was too cowardly to go through with it, thus his asking a complete stranger to participate. As if that would be an instant sign that he was justified. That would be why he peeled off right away. I am hoping they are right. I am hoping that I have only stumbled upon an "attempted" rape. I have a four-hour bus ride ahead of me with which to debate it in my head. Luckily, not everyone was around to hear my breathy announcement from behind the fence. It minimizes how many times I am "checked in on." My crush is one of the people on hand to console me. I am not in a place to discuss it yet, even with her. I want to tune everything out, but I do not want to listen to my tape, because of the raw associations.

I feel like an idiot. I failed this woman who I did not know, who deserved a savior. She got me instead. A college kid with self-esteem issues who gets flustered in the moment. The whole day I am thinking this. Even when other events come up: the rush of cheering that comes like a wave down the length of the march, you can hear it in the distance and then it would suddenly get louder and drown you before continuing down the parade of people; or, my good friend Ian who was very into leading chants like "My voice, my choice" to which I would try to explain to him "Not exactly, Ian." He would go into the next chant even more exuberantly rhyming as many different ways as possible with the word "choice". Girls and Boys. Hear our Voice. We would laugh for a moment and then I would go back to feeling like an idiot.

Currently watching : Personal Velocity Release date: 18 March, 2003

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A Belated SXSW Entry

This week, I did something that I don't usually do: I watched a band play. I had no choice really as Austin has been plunged deep into the SXSW Festival and every nook and cranny of the city has gotten in on the act of musical showcasing. The Mexican food joint down the street has a stage set up. The coffee place I frequent has hopped onto the "band"-wagon and converted its parking lot into a venue. Today, I inadvertently attended a concert while buying a slice of pizza.

Now here is a confession: while I love music, I do not care for live music. Having it performed in front of me rarely enhances the listening experience. In fact, many times it detracts. There was one concert I attended two summers ago: David Bowie's Reality Tour with the Polyphonic Spree opening. Great music, no doubt, but when you are standing on your feet for hour three sandwiched between the yuppies who still want to feel vital and the folks who had three too many, it loses its luster. Now add 50,000 more people and balmy weather and set it at Tommy Hilfiger Stadium.

It is ironic to say the least that I have moved here to Austin, the live music capital of the world. And now after only six weeks of residence, I want the city back from these tourists. I have developed that much of a sense of ownership. I want out of this saturation where every other male haircut is architectural, every other surface is flyered, where every other band name sounds like random dictionary pages stuck together. In fact I may have seen Random Dictionary Pages Stuck Together while I was buying socks.

10:20 PM - 4 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

My Day as Svetl
Current mood: relieved
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers

I do not like sports. The plot does not change often enough. Of course, for people who are REALLY into sports, it is always about more than just that one game. It is about the comebacks, the streaks, the slumps, the trades, the trials and the triumphs. That is why I love sports movies. All of those intricacies get compressed down to less than two hours.

I also love the TV show Friday Night Lights, so much so that I signed up to be an extra for two shooting days in a cow pasture just outside of Austin. Being new to the area, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to meet lots of new people, get a look at some behind the scenes action, and make a little money – emphasis on little.

My friend Jeremy picked me up in his mega van, the kind with a makeshift bed in the back that would make him look like a playa, if you didn't know him. With an 80s medley blasting on the XM Radio, we fumbled through the side roads for a half hour on our way to the cow pasture. The directions were sketchy, particularly taking a right on Hergotz when we found that Hergotz Lane crossed with Hergotz Lane. We finally hit upon a collection of big white tents in the distance and were directed to pull into the makeshift lot where we soon met up with a friend of Jeremy's named Raza, who had transplanted to Austin from Dallas not too long ago herself. The largest of the tents had a line leading up to it with all the other "background artists". Each of them carried a garment bag or suitcase with a collection of different shirts to wear for the shoot – in colors of gold and royal blue to be fans of the home team, the Dillon Panthers, as well as light blue shirts for when we switch to be fans of the opposing team, the Brant Vikings. There were mothers and daughters sharing an experience with each other, the self-important cell phone gabbers who probably classifed this as "career-building", the overly young and naïve, the overly made-up and plastic surgeried, and the occasional interesting outsider.

We sat in that tent for almost two hours, eating the free pizza and filling out the proper forms, eventually taking turns with the wardrobe consultants to see which of the clothes we brought passed true Dillon and/or Brant muster. Jeremy bypassed all of that as he was not playing a fan, but a press person. He had his own line (which was much shorter) and his own selection of casual conservative attire to choose from, though he had to eat the same pizza.

We were directed out to the football field, the cow pasture about forty yards over a hill which the set department had made into a high school football field complete with bleachers, vending carts and school busses. The extras were polled to see how many of them had pick-up trucks, a reasonable likelihood considering we were in Texas, and those whose hands went up were asked to drive them up to line the Dillon side of the field. The Brant Vikings apparently came from a rich community and so their side of the field was line with high-tech RVs. Both sides were swathed in banners, the colors of course matching our wardrobes, stating things like "Penalize the Panthers" and "Victory over Vikings". There were also huge cranes that held large cross-shaped bars over our heads. These bars were connected to hoses that were connected to huge water tanks. Today, they would be filming a mud bowl, and heavy rain would be needed.

Raza and I filed into the bleachers. Behind us was a lovely couple the female half of which was very enthusiastic and amusingly ad-libbed regardless of whether the cameras were on. There were a couple of older women who were clearly football fans, and probably the only ones in our bleacher section. I followed them for the appropriate demeanor. Eventually we got pushed inward on the bleacher to make room for two guys from Dallas who were visiting their friend, Scott, the actor who plays Jason Street, a once promising quarterback who suffered a spinal injury early in the season and is now paralyzed from the waist down. The guys were not prepared for the shoot, however. Despite the heat, we had to wear jackets as this game was supposed to take place in the dead of winter. The wardrobe people clamored to get authentic Dillon Panthers sweatshirts for them to wear, and sweat heavily in.

Another hour passed at least, as more of us were winterized, props to cheer with were distributed and the scene was described to us by one of the men with megaphones. Turns out that there was a "horrible train wreck" just outside of the Dillon's usual field resulting in the spilling of harmful chemicals. Coach Taylor decided that the game must go on – this being the semi-finals and the winner then going to State – and so the communities joined together to build this makeshift football field in the cow pasture where we were now sitting. Lovely story. Let's get shooting.

"Rolling" a different megaphone man would shout through his megaphone and the crowd would start murmuring until we heard "Cut!" "Rolling is not your cue," he would then say. "When I say 'Background Action', THAT is your cue." Well, excuse us. And while you are at it, stop shouting cues at us through a megaphone to which we are not supposed to respond. It would make it easier to understand the process then. But the miscommunication continued for a few more cycles. Meanwhile, the football players, both actors and extras were on the field making their plays, over and over again.

This was nothing like the sports movies (or TV) that I loved. This was even worse than watching sports, because now the specifics of the games that meant nothing to me, that bored me, were on a regular loop while the players learned their choreography and the cross-section of humanity on the bleachers around me learned the difference between the shouted cues. It was then that I decided to start concocting a backstory for the fan I was playing, to help pass the time. It was then I created Svetl.

Svetl Chodoba (last name taken from a college friend, first name built on pure whim), I decided was part of a family of immigrants that relocated from the most rural parts of the Ukraine to live a less modest life in the community of Dillon, Texas when he was in High School. The Americas was a strange and wonderful place to Svetl that he had trouble relating to except when it came to competitive sports. It was a basic story of winning and losing that he could wrap his brain around, and it filled him with excitement to watch that pigskin get tossed around. Raza created a character for herself, first name Wanda, last name something very Jewish, who owned a lot of cats.

Soon, the props people distributed umbrellas and slickers. The waterworks were going to begin. Now, being a citizen of Texas for a little over a month, I am not aware what kind of weather they get, but I cannot imagine that there has ever been a rainstorm as heavy as what they dumped on us for the next three or four hours. Svetl was very unhappy. His bag which he had filled with books and puzzles magazines to use during the down time had been soaked as did the bottom third of his pants. The game made no sense anymore as we were never told whether we should be happy with the play or not, leading fans to do both reactions simultaneously. On some occasions, we were asked to pantomime, while the actors delivered their lines. This made things even more confusing as we had trouble as a group deciding on a collective response to the game. Some of the "fans" also kept mistaking pantomiming with going slow-motion for even more variety.

Jeremy, being one of the "press", was at the end zone, where there was less barking and absolutely no wetness. Svetl and Wanda hated him.

Finally, we came to the final scenes of the shoot. Megaphone men directed us to run happily onto the field (our team was going to State, after all) and embrace one of the players. The ground was so muddy and we were so far at the end of the bleachers that we could not make it out there before "Cut" was shouted. I kept turning to Raza to say things like "Svetl would not do this." "Svetl is the kind who admires the players from afar." We instead made our way towards the end zone where some of the pick-up trucks were parked. It was on the back of one that we met Orion, a robust and ebullient cook, huge in stature, made huger by his tattoos, piercings and skull-and-crossbones bandanna. There we hung, pantomiming high-fives whenever "Background Action" was called while the other fans continued to slosh about in the mud until they got the take right.

It was nine and a half hours total, spanning to a little past midnight, before we were dismissed, wet, muddied, tired and hungry as the only things on set were bagged chips, granola bars, canned peanuts, etc. Raza and I wished we hadn't signed up for the second day, but felt obligated. We knew half the people there were not going to return. The booker had expressed as much in the concern of her voice when I called in for the details.

We grabbed some pork loin and mashed taters from the buffet before heading to the our cars. Thankfully, call time for the next day was not until after 4 in the afternoon. Svetl and Wanda would be able to get a good night's sleep before returning. And perhaps, with more back story.

11:40 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Accomodations

Being a performer/teacher/out-of-towner at the Seattle Festival of Improvisational Theater, I was put up at the Hotel Deca located near one of the venues. It is a Best Western that six months ago was converted into a posher alternative with brushed metal elevators and cashmere throws on the beds. A few highlights of the stay, The Good, The Bad and The What The:

1. The room is equipped with a flat-screen widescreen (and possibly HD) television with a DVD player and cable.

2. The configuration of the room allowed me to watch said flat-screen widescreen (and possibly HD) television from the toilet the other day. That was one of the most luxurious moments of my life.

3. There is a complimentary continental breakfast downstairs but only between the hours of 6:30am and 8:30am. I am not familiar with that time of day.

4. They fold the corners inward on the toilet paper overhang. Every day they do this. I use toilet paper every day. And each time after housekeeping has been through, part of their reset involves turning those corners back under.

5. One of the concierges, Catherine, remembers me by name because there was an issue as to what room I was supposed to be in. The first room, 712 (which is my birthday, inspiring me to think it was a good omen), was occupied by a small balding man with little patience and less pants. I was then relocated to 601 which was a better fit, it being empty and me needing a room. Now Catherine sees me on my way to the room and says "Hey Mr. Ronen" and I swing by the front desk with a "Hey, Catherine" and a high five.

6. They deliver a free copy of the Seattle Times every morning which is slid under the door. The staff here has an amazing arm as this morning's copy cleared over two feet in past the doorway.

I feel guilty staying in this hotel. Originally I was supposed to stay here with my partner in Imp. (our improv duo where we use as few words as possible), the wonderful Karen Wight who was stranded in New York City by JetBlue. The snowstorms earlier in the week started a chain reaction of cancelled flights and the bumping of those passengers onto other flights that were bumped onto Karen's flight bumping her well into the weekend. Leaving me to do our shows alone (more on that another time) and leaving me with this glorious room to myself.

I was so guilty the whole time that I would keep offering crash space to attendees who were staying with friends on spare couches. I would invite people over for drinks and movies. No takers. So I sit in this glorious room by myself. Guilty.

Don't get me wrong though. I am stilling enjoying a movie on the flat-screen widescreen (and possibly HD) television from the toilet.

Currently watching : The Motel Release date: 30 January, 2007

9:25 PM - 4 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

11 Strange Things About Me
Current mood: amused

My good friend, Jill Bernard (maven of improvisation in Minneapolis, MN), tagged me with the challenge of the above title. Apparently it is some sort of blog pyramid scheme. I am supposed to write the 11 things and then tag 11 others to do the same. I will only do the former, I don't believe in passing on tasks.

1. I hate sports but I LOVE sports movies. They take all those things that sports fans love (the comebacks, the winning streaks, the hardships) and pack it into just under two hours.

2. I used to be known in my college troupe as The Voice of Doom because I was such a negative nelly. Thank god they didn't think to call me Negative Nelly.

3. I love pinching people's cheeks. It is a sickness actually.

4. I have had two expired learner's permits and never had a driver's license.

5. I can never spit outside of a church or synagogue or cemetery because while I am agnostic, I don't like to push it, just in case.

6. Many of my dreams feature celebrities, my favorite of which was the one where I kept following Patrick Stewart around some loft party because he and I were wearing the same jester's cap.

7. I took over two years of junior high school French and I mostly just remember the curse words that I learned independently.

8. I write short pieces about video games though I have not played any video games for a few years now. In fact I am opposed to the idea of playing most video games that are out there.

9. My mother moved to Miami because, as she explained it to me "I don't see you enough."

10. I am fascinated with people iPods and used to have a plan to ask random people on the subway what the first five songs that came up on their shuffle were. I even made signs to communicate with them while they were busy listening to their mp3s. I never did it though.

11. I believe I have bad electronic karma as I have had an above normal amount of electronics crap out on me. I am lucky that my computer has survived this long.

There you go. Judge not lest ye be judged.

And while I will not pass this challenge to 11 people, I invite them to send me a message if they choose to take the challenge upon themselves.

Happy Valentine's Day to us all.

Currently reading : Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time By Rob Sheffield Release date: 02 January, 2007

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Why I Hate Southwest Airlines
Current mood: peeved

I am 6'2" and broad shouldered in frame. A big guy of over 200 pounds. I am not an intimidating sort but I do take up some space. This becomes most evident when dealing with air travel. I can't fly Continental because they still use jets from the 70s, a time populated by mostly mythical dwarves, near as I can tell, as the seats can barely hold one of my buttcheeks much less the whole rump.

And it is also why I hate flying Southwest Airlines.

I am currently waiting in the airport for my flight out of Raleigh where I am leaving after a ruckus week with the Dirty South Improv Festival on my way to another destined-to-be ruckus festival in Seattle. As a teacher, my flights were set up for me, and unfortunately that was through Southwest.

Southwest has the most retarded boarding system in the world. You know how normally the check-in agent would board people by rows starting with the back rows and working their way forward? When you hear the row that matches with the number on your ticket, you step forward and go sit in your assigned seat. Southwest decided, Ah, fuck that! They decided not to assign seats.

That's right. It is general seating like we are filing in for a matinee. Instead you get one of three letters. An A which means that you get to grab seats first. B which stands for Better Luck Next Time. And C which stands for CFucked. If you are a family of four stuck in the C queue, chances are someone else is going to have to look after your kids in the middle of the cabin while you plop yourself in the back.

Now, because there's only the three letter designations and no assigned seats, I have to stand on the line far ahead of time. As it is now, I am on the line an hour ahead of my flight and I will still have to battle two businessmen and a middle-aged woman with a mullet to make sure I get my sorely needed emergency exit seat. That's right Becky Ray Cyrus, you are going down and taking the Bear Stearns twins with you.

Of course to add to the experience, my original flight that was supposed to already have left was cancelled due to the fact that it was going through Chicago first and as we all know, Chicago and flights just don't mix well. I went up to the ticket counter and told her of my situation.

She looked at me blankly and said "What would you like to do?"

How lazy is Southwest Fucking Airlines? Not only do I have to assign my own seats but now I have to fill in their agents on the procedure of rerouting a flight when one gets cancelled? You want me to drive my bags out onto the tarmac for you while I am at it? How about I take care of communications with the control tower? Shall I bag my own dry roasted peanuts?

Next time I will push for JetBlue where at least incompetence is balanced out with individual TV units to drown out the misery.

8:06 AM - 2 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

That Damn Mix Exchange

I get easily overwhelmed, sometimes to the point of having anxiety attacks. It hits suddenly and inconsistently. There have been times standing in a random men's room, worried that I have stepped into the women's restroom instead, even though I would be staring at the line of urinals during the few minutes that it would take to relax. Some days I avoid superstores altogether because I just do not need that many options all at once.

So, I should have known better than to sign up for a mix CD exchange.

It started simply enough, as my friend Val initiated the idea on an online forum of which I was a part. It was a forum for improvisers in the Austin area two months before my move there. Gee, I thought to myself, an opportunity to get to know better the people that I will be living amongst and working with. Plus I like music.

Over the following weeks, I came to recognize my hubris. Sure, I like music. We all do, but I don't really know music. The mix exchange, meanwhile, was brewing a lot of online excitement. The participation list had grown to a party of twenty – nineteen Austinites, and myself. Austin is the live music capital of the world. There is music coming out of every pore in the city and the people who live there bathe in it like it were a desert spring. This was the image that hung in my head while I fretted over what I could possibly pull out to make my CD worthy of distribution.

I have always been someone who would just glom on to the musical selections of those with which I was closest. My earliest experiences of music are peppered with Kenny Rogers and Barbra Streisand, compilations of which would play on regular rotation in my mother's car on our various errand runs and road trips. This is why I can sing all the lyrics to "Coward of the County" and "I Am a Woman in Love". Soon, I would step under the Top 40 wing of my sister, four years older than me. We had a bit we would do whenever "The Things You Do For Love" would come on: when the singer would say "she says she wants to make up", we would yell "Make Up!" and pretend to hit each other with huge powder puffs. During the 80s, I started absorbing more and more music, though strictly through the mainstream, from my first 45 purchase of "Jessie's Girl" by Rick Springfield on. Throughout my schooling, I didn't have many close friends, rather I had many acquaintances, and I immersed myself in whatever their musical styles they followed: from club hopping in high school listening to Hot 95 on the radio through hanging out with the Progressive Student Union, a club that was really about nothing more than having a room where people could hang out and listen to Bad Brains and Fugazi.

Soon after, college drifted out of my life and all the new music I encountered was experienced through two sources: my wife and the trendier car commercials.

I needed to expand and the clock was ticking down the weeks until my move, where I would be expected to deliver twenty CDs that somehow show who I was, musically. We all talk about giving mixes and how it is a chance to share music that touches you in some way in a hopes that the recipient will similarly enjoy it. This, of course, is bullshit. We want to look cool. Music is for everybody. Music mixes are for the cool. Covering different styles, putting them in the right order, conveying a message about who you are in this world (read: cool) and what kind of sense this crazy world makes to you. When you are exchanging these lyrical testaments with only one person, it is tricky enough to pull off. How do you make twenty varied peopled think you are cool?

I started researching heavily. I called my friends who were more "with it" and asked what they were listening to so that I could download it onto my computer. I scoured the internet for musical discussions and websites that would make music suggestions based on an artist that you would enter into their database. I thought of renting "High Fidelity" to use as an instructional video.

The most frenetic aspect of the task was the litany of themes that I devised in an effort to disguise my novice behind a playful connection of songs, perhaps one that people hadn't considered. One of my favorite songs is Elvis Costello's "Beyond Belief" which contained the line "Through a two-way looking glass/you see your Alice." Aha, the English major (who never graduated) in me proclaimed, I will construct a mix of songs that make subtle literary references. Plus, I would have people guess the theme for added points to me. This idea soon died due to a lack of suitable and subtle findings, replaced with themes of "funny songs", songs with extended metaphors, songs representing the seven deadly sins (hey, I thought, Joe Jackson knows something about envy), etc.

All the while, the other participants were posting their songlists on the forum. To say that I did not recognize over half the bands mentions would be a drastic understatement. Whatever bands I did recognize relieved me that maybe I did not have dig too deep while simultaneously hitting me in the gut with the thought of Well, I can't use that song now.

After dozens of new downloads, hundreds of re-listenings, and scores of rearrangements, I finished my CDs. With a sigh of resignation, and a healthy need to just end this project which started in the realm of being "fun", I hit the burn button on my computer. I designed special covers using my favorite Magritte painting as the main image with the tentative title of Asaf's Mix of Extended Metaphors and Premises. The Hush Sound, Actionslacks, Open Hand and other acts that I didn't know existed two months prior were featured. So was a rare French pop ballad from the 60s by Salvatore Adamo that my dad would listen too in the car a lot. And some songs that were undeniable in greatness such as "Children of the Revolution" by T-Rex even though it reminded of my now ex-wife who introduced me to it. I made my twenty copies and tried not to think about it anymore as the distribution process began.

Weeks later – I was now getting settled into my new home in Austin at that time – my friend Shannon told me how glad he was that I included Wynonie Harris' "Keep on Churnin'" and how it satisfied his enjoyment of 1920s/30s era tunes with raunchy lyrics. With a newly found confidence built upon joyous success, I told him about some of his other numbers that I thought to use. I had pulled it off, against the obstacles that undoubtedly only I saw.

Later that evening, I would kick myself when I realized that I mentioned that Wynonie Harris number came off of a Best Of compilation. My novice persists.

Currently listening : Paparazzi Lightning By Ghostland Observatory

8:11 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

An Austin Interview
Current mood: relaxed

Austin's That Other Paper did an interview with me that can be found at http://thatotherpaper.com/austin/asaf_ronen_interview.

I am now thoroughly Austinite.

Currently watching : Idiocracy Release date: 09 January, 2007

11:51 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

A History of Celebrity Sightings
Current mood: wistful

The other day I was walking down the street and I see Piper Perabo hanging out talking on a cell phone. Today, I passed by Ed Burns who was on his way into his building. I know where he lives because I usually see him with his wife, Christy Turlington, and their child.

This is something I am going to miss about New York. Not seeing celebrities, but being part of an atmosphere where they walk amongst us and no one bothers them. They are part of the landscape and we like to sneak a peek (oh, so that is how they live"). But we let them be, most of us. And that is why they live in New York. So here are seven of my best celebrity sightings and interactions.

1. I saw Woody Allen and Mia Farrow in a Irish pub just off of Columbus. My friends and I happened to be talking about film when we spotted them at the next table. Soon a woman came up to them saying "Hi, Mia. Hi, Woody." It was obvious that she did not know them. They soon left.

2. While working at F.A.O. Schwarz as a toy demonstrator, I taught Candace Cameron how to use Devil Sticks.

3. I also got to show them to Whoopi Goldberg. "Yet another culture appropriated from the East for mass marketing here in the West," I tell her. She laughs. Awesome.

4. Walking out a shoe store with my then wife, a scrawny white-haired man walks past us. "That was Jim Jarmusch." She asks me if I want to go in to say something. After some thought, I decide not to. "I don't really like any of his movies."

5. Working at a Barnes & Noble – one of the few small ones before they all became SuperStores – I am approached at the counter by someone looking for "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues." It is Uma Thurman. I blank on the author. This was a year before she made the movie.

6. Hanging in a green room for a CNN entertainment show with Aaron Eckhart, Florence Henderson and a very tightly pulled Kenny Rogers with whom I discuss "Coward of the County."

7. At a Tribeca café, I enter behind Leelee Sobeiski who tells the cashier that she just moved into the area. I notice that seated at one of the side tables is Joie Lee (sister to Spike Lee who played Denzel's wife in Mo Better Blues). I keep wanting to introduce them to each other: "Leelee, Joie Lee. Joie Lee, Leelee.

10:39 PM - 1 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Baby's First Tattoo
Current mood: swollen

I remember when I was vehemently opposed to tattoos. Not on other people, but the idea of affixing a permanent picture on my body was ludicrous. Those times have changed.



I have had it in my mind to get a tattoo for the last few years and I knew that it would be this: an ampersand (the older style one that was derived from the word "Et" which is French for 'and") and an exclamation mark. I use this logo to represent my website, YESand.com (the improv information source that cannot be denied, ahem), but also to represent the idea of Yes Anding itself, to enthusiastic embrace.

I polled some friends as to whether I should get this tattoo now before leaving NYC or when I get to Austin. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of getting here (maybe I should have asked non-New Yorkers, oh well). And I agreed.

I am about to undertake several big life changes simultaneously and I want to have a little inspirational reminder right there on my forearm looking up at me, reminding me to enthusiastically embrace. My friend, Dan, who was my tattooist, kept asking me if I was sure I wanted it facing that way as opposed to the typical way of having it readable by others.

This one isn't for others, though. It is for me.

12:10 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment