Voyaging/Foraging
Every man has an urge to explore- a vestige from the hunter-gathering days of yore when we would travel far from home to gain the necessary provisions and experience to sustain life for one more day.
In two weeks, when I head off to Asia on a two week voyage that will take me to Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma and South Korea (albeit the last one on a 12 hour layover), I am exploring new territory for the purpose of acquiring food- but in the modern sense I am seeking food for thought and there are other forces I am both aware and unaware of at play.
Traveling is in one sense a challenge and in another an active response to the innate desire to discover fertile grounds. It isn’t enough to stay at home- all of the food sources are mapped out. Men must traipse into uncharted waters to taste new things, see new sights and refine existing stimulus. It is only then that we know what truly will aid us in times when our food supply (or vacation days) run low.
Yet, with these new experiences comes the challenge of survival. Do we stay where food is plentiful, or do we strike out into the wild, via airplane, train and car, but hopefully not Greyhound? We go, we clear paths into a deeper consciousness of what it means to be a man in today’s world, and we learn, realize, and come to rely on only our instinct to get us through layovers, questionable water quality, and pushy market salespeople.
For without prior challenges, we don’t learn to rise above that which we already are. In other words, we cut ourselves off from becoming who we want to become. This trip to Asia is not just my own affirmation of feeling like a successful provider, it is a test to myself from me. It is one I will pass, for it is one I must.
To all travelers and dreamers, I say “Bon Voyage” and never remain hungry for the meal you have had once too often.
Labels: life, men, travel
The Return of Phish
Tomorrow I will be back in the groove. After 4 years, 6 months and 20 days, (not to put too fine a point on it or anything), I will see Phish, my favorite band, once again. Besides being fantastic musicians, Phish has always represented a bohemian ideal that I ascribe to in theory but eschew in my own lifestyle. In that way, they symbolize what should be in the world instead of what actually is.
When the lights go down and the roar of the crowd becomes deafening, my eyes will close and thanks will be proffered. I know I am lucky to be seeing them but my presence at the concert was self-promised the minute after they left the stage more than 4 years ago.
The question remains, for me, do I want Phish to evolve or do I just want them reincarnated on stage? I lean towards evolution because in many ways I know that this is how musicians become better; however I secretly hope for a timewarp back to 1994 when Phish was at its agreed upon peak. In truth, they could sit on the edge of the stage and sing the score from Madame Butterfly and I would eat it up.
While these two shows will be my 26th and 27th time seeing the band, it feels like I am rediscovering them. Many years of listening to them on my iPod and watching You Tube videos, hauling out to see the lead singer on his solo gigs and caressing old ticket stubs has provided a new found appreciation- absence has made my heart grow fonder.
If anything, the dearth of music that I could listen to in place of Phish never provided much of an escape. Even my iPod knows, after I skip four obscure songs in shuffle mode, to pacify me with a Phish song that I will listen to through the end.
In a sign of the times, whereas I used to borrow my dad’s cell phone when seeing a Phish show, now everyone has one and videos can be recorded from anyone with a camera. Whether this will provide more or less of a distraction (probably more) is to be determined but does provide a new level of interactivity.
This interactivity, both on a technological and personal level, speaks to Phish’s influence. Like the other 15,999 people this weekend who are lucky enough to be at the first show, it will easily be an intoxicating experience.
I am ready; ready to embrace what I remember, ready to dance and cheer, ready to share good times with friends new and old and ready to be under their influence once again.
To Phish, I say, “Thanks, and welcome back.”
Destiny: Made in Italy
There are certain items that I am destined to own- a nice bike, pressed pennies from around the country and, when it comes to clothing, various pieces I have picked up over the years.
In September, I was on one of my many scouting expeditions to the local Filenes Basement here in New York City. There was a huge rack of wonderful designer clothing from Marios, an upscale store from the Northwest with locations in Seattle, Washington and Oregon.
I spotted many nice items, a Loro Piana button down, a Luciano Barbera sweater and what would soon become the item I covet, a funky dress shirt from Etro. Priced at $100, it was a bit out of my price range but I tried it on anyway just to get a sense of how it fit. It fit very nicely.
Alas, it went back on the rack and I left the store without giving it too much thought. Several weeks later, on another visit, it was still on the rack. Again, that is where it stayed. Another 2 weeks and I returned to Filenes but the Etro shirt had disappeared. I wished the new owner well in my mind and went about my business.
After my 401K lost a good 25% of its value and some months had past, I was back at Filenes and the rack of Marios clothing was discounted 40%. The shirt was back on the rack but at $60, I still didn’t want to pull the trigger.
Another week and I was in the area, back at Filenes and the shirt was gone. Again, I wished the new owner well and thought, “Someone definitely got a pretty good bargain, as the retail on the shirt was close to $300.”
Cut to December 7, and on my way home from the gym, I thought I would pop into Filenes once again. The Marios clothing rack had been moved from the back of the store to the area right when you step off the escalator in the men’s section. This could only mean further discounts as Filenes only puts items there that they want to get rid of. Lo and behold, a 60% discount sign loomed above the few items left.
The Etro shirt stood proudly, among stretched out cardigans and pants in size 38 and 40. At $40.00, it was a purchase I was comfortable making. But there was no pricetag to be found. Knowing that Filenes has the precedent of coding very reduced pricing on items with no tag, I snatched it and patiently waited in line with other holiday shoppers.
I inquired to the manager who had to call downstairs to find out how much the shirt was selling for. Several minutes later, he connected to someone in the abyss of Filenes who told him the price of the shirt was $49.99. My heart did a small backflip inside my chest.
The price, with a 60% discount, was $19.99. I handed over a Jackson and smiled broadly as he rang up my purchase. The manager put the shirt in a bag and apologized for the delay. I responded, “No problem, I’m glad it all worked out,” and breezed out of the store as if on a cushion of discounted air.
Introducing the new shirt to my wardrobe, I could tell everything would work perfectly with the items I knew I could wear it with. After putting it in the Whirlpool steamer and ironing the shirt crisply, it took its rightful place in my wardrobe, destined to be a part of my sartorial expressiveness for years to come.
Destiny, it seems, can come in many forms.
Labels: clothing, Etro, new york
Etiquette 101
Lyudmila Bloch wants to change the world. That she speaks Russian, English, French, and Spanish is no accident- her points are clear in both language and action.
Bloch, a renowned etiquette coach, stands up to greet you. After you sit down, she will look you in the eye and make you feel important. Changing the world is serious business- if she gives you her attention she expects you will live up to it.
Bloch teaches etiquette because manners will improve society. “I teach a great deal about tolerance and patience,” she said about her etiquette lessons, “It is also about compassion and being self-aware.”
While Bloch acknowledges this is an uphill battle, it only makes her more determined. But that determination does not come at the sacrifice of consideration, “I try not to be too judgmental and I allow people to make mistakes,” Bloch said.
Within our increasingly casual world in which we have seen erosion in both personal boundaries and public courtesy, Bloch serves as a counterbalance. Even after teaching etiquette to more than 4,000 children, she still sees everyday as a new opportunity to impart her message through every element of her life.
Bloch is dressed to impress, even on the weekend. Slender and of medium height, Bloch wears a matte black suit, the collar of her coral pink shirt stands at attention, framing her face, which appears flawless under the bright lights of the Cosi on Broadway. Bloch has blood red hair and soft features accented by a pair of red oval-framed eyeglasses. She smiles often, revealing glistening white teeth.
Then she speaks: “I do this from my heart.” Her accent is Russian, the words intimate and sentences abbreviated. When she agrees with you, she will say “absolutely,” which has the effect of making you feel like you have said precisely the right thing.
Her decision to become an etiquette coach came only after she was looking, essentially, for herself. Bloch came to New York City in the early 1980’s for marketing work from her native Russia after training as a linguist at the Moscow State Pedagogical University. When traveling to Asia on business, there were no guidelines available on how to act in social situations- except from the State Department and they were not helpful.
Sensing an opportunity in the marketplace, Bloch enrolled under Dorothea Johnson at The Protocol School of Washington, the first woman to open an etiquette school in the United States. Johnson became a role model for Bloch, both in terms of Johnson’s entrepreneurial drive and success teaching the world of protocol to the washed and unwashed masses.
After a two-week intense seminar in “Children’s Etiquette,” Bloch came back to New York to launch Etiquette Outreach for children ages 6 to 18 and adults.
Though Bloch prefers to work with children, she also works with corporate clients, providing the basics of business etiquette to many in finance such as the Royal Bank of Scotland and Goldman Sachs, as well as a new program in which she teaches spouses of corporate executives how to function at corporate events. These clients also pay better, from $2-5,000 per class, as opposed to $900 for a public school or non-profit organization.
Bloch is not in it for the money, she does it because she feels her lessons can last a lifetime. “When you take a student who is 5/6/7 years old, they are easily influenced because they don’t have any bad habits. By teenagers they have bad habits,” Bloch said.
Family problems often lead to etiquette problems. “Kids lack basic social skills because they didn’t have a positive role model growing up. It’s like dogs, there are no bad dogs, there are poor owners,” Bloch said as she explained how etiquette can bridge these deeply personal issues.
Stacy Albanese, a former client, called Bloch, “A national treasure. I wish that there were more people like her.” At a joint birthday party for Albanese’s two daughters aged three and five, “It was very challenging because she had a pack of girls who couldn’t care less about what she was saying and she did an incredible job of getting their attention and her point across. My three year old still says ‘Ms. Bloch wouldn’t like it if…,’” Albanese said.
In 2000, Bloch became an independent consultant with The Plaza hotel, where she helped design unique services for the hotel’s VIP clients, including a child etiquette seminar.
“She forced The Plaza to be human,” said Rosemary Carroll, her colleague at The Plaza hotel who co-authored a book entitled, The Golden Rules of Etiquette at The Plaza with Bloch, which was designed for kids but is easily applicable for adults.
Carroll recalled that 45 Russian orphans were at the hotel in advance of their potential adoption and Bloch convinced the hotel to throw them a party with gifts, and provided a gratis etiquette class.
“We [also] did a lot of classes for public schools. Kids would arrive wearing their jeans very low and with a cocky attitude. By the time Lyudmila was done with them, they were sitting up straight and ‘yes sir-ing’ and ‘no sir-ing,’” Carroll said. “She would tell them ‘You are exceptional. When you sit at the Queen’s table and at the White House you will know how to behave.’” They also left with their pants around their waist – and not an inch lower.
After The Plaza closed for remodeling, Bloch did not stop working with disadvantaged children. In 2005, Bloch and Carroll introduced an etiquette program to public schools in the Bronx.
Reinhardt fondly remembers working with Bloch. “She was out of our league in terms of price. It was an altruistic thing…she didn’t care about the money, she wanted to let the children to have the experience,” Sheila Reinhardt, former PTA President at The Millennium Academy/Bronx, said.
Bloch and Reinhardt see the effects of an etiquette intervention as a ripple across civilization. “When Lyudmila teaches one child about etiquette, she teaches 100…You don’t know how many generations that will go through,” Reinhardt noted.
If it were up to Bloch, etiquette would be compulsory in schools. “Education goes hand in hand with etiquette,” Bloch is fond of saying.
While most of her business comes from referrals and she does not advertise her services, her calendar is full of appointments across the eastern seaboard- this is a business where there are always new lessons to impart with a potential market as big as the country.
While there are always new opportunities, there is also the need for further education. “Etiquette evolves as our lives and our technology does,” Bloch said. The most common forms of bad etiquette today, Bloch notes, are the inappropriate use of cell phone and email.
“You are sitting in a public place and people are intruding into your space on their cell phone. This is not your apartment,” Bloch said. With perfect ironic timing, a young woman with a large backpack on her cell phone squeezed between Bloch and an adjacent table, inadvertently scattering Bloch’s papers.
Bloch drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. What would normally be cause for swearing under one’s breath was for the etiquette coach a teachable moment. “Technology is our blessing and our curse,” Bloch said calmly, “[but] we have to remember human relationships have to come first.”
A Fresh Cut
He is the world’s worst driver, swerving the steering wheel left and right, hanging out of the vehicle’s doorless frame. He isn’t even wearing his silver framed glasses- not that it matters much, the speedometer is only a sticker and the wheels don’t touch the ground.
His father lies, “You are driving and doing such a good job,” as he props up the driver in the decommissioned Power Wheels Jeep. The driver won’t sit still, he has stimulus from all directions. The Wiggles sing “I’m a hoop-de-do kind of guy” as they dance around in oversized foam cowboy hats on a TV/DVD player in front of the dusty brown vehicle, an entire Lego city and child size kitchen beckons from the toy store portion of Whipper Snippers.
Gloria reaches into the trunk, select her tools and gently adjust the driver’s oval head to the left. The initial moment of contact between Gloria’s fingers and the driver’s head of soft brown blond hair causes his world to cease. The first cut is always the worst.
The stainless steel scissors glide behind the driver’s ears. Snip-snip, pause, snip. His hands relax their vice grip on the sides of the Jeep, and color returns to his knuckles. The Wiggles reappear, he feels the plastic seat, someone in the store is asking about a wooden model dinosaur, his senses return.
“Let me just get the side here,” Gloria says gently as his father taps away at a Blackberry Pearl. The Jeep swerves as hands return to the wheel. The dusty brown vehicle emblazoned with the word “Adventure,” still lives up to its name.
“You are all done, good job” Gloria tells the driver as she regards her handiwork in the large square mirror. “Do you like it?” the father asks the driver. The driver nods, then thinks for a moment, and shakes his head no. “He likes it,” Dad reassures.
Gloria removes a shoulder pad of rubber, errant hairs falling onto the pine flooring. The father helps the driver slip out of the blue smock printed with frogs and clowns.
The driver is lifted out of the Jeep, defying gravity before being set back down on earth. He receives his glasses and the world he has known for three and a half years comes back into focus.
On to the next adventure.
Labels: adventure, children, style
Picking up the Pieces
The feelings are at once familiar yet just as painful to anyone who has been through it. The anger, sadness, introspection and frustration that goes along with a breakup are cathartic in the long run and devastating in the short term.
How do you console yourself when the person you’d naturally reach out to is the same one you now must avoid? These are the times that ultimately make you a better person many argue but that is not what you want to hear. Of course, you’d want the phone to magically ring with the news your former lover has come to their senses, of course you would take them back.
So here it is. Nine hours into a newly single life, a position that you did not choose. Just a day ago, blissfully but cautiously making plans for the weekend as if everything was normal, unaware that your anchor would pull up and leave you adrift in the dark and turbulent sea where the waters were previously calm.
What advice do you offer others; is it what you would tell yourself? Embrace the experience, let the tears fall, pick up the pieces and let your heart mend naturally. Yes, that will do.
Labels: relationships
Taking Insecurity to the Tyra Banks
I have never watched The Tyra Banks Show but I have seen some pretty funny clips and lampoons of her on The Soup and other shows. Admittedly, I was going into this a bit speculative.
Before leaving for Montana on a 4th of July outdoors vacation, I sat down to watch a show whose female subjects “are obsessed with designer labels.
They had three desperate contestants, all of whom would be competing for a white Spring Limited Edition Louis Vuitton- worth almost $800.
Carrie, the first woman (and I use this term loosely) was a pixie like art teacher who bought a fake Coach bag, named it ‘Pilar’ and loved it like a child. Pilar’s zipper broke a week later and now she is here because she really wants a designer purse but cannot afford one.
A heavyset Hatian woman named Daphne, who probably thinks she looks like Jennifer Hudson, is up next. She is obsessed with Louis Vuitton and plans to “Have a Vuitton themed wedding cake and name her first child Vuitton.” She thought since people can name kids Alexis and Mercedes she can do it with Vuitton.
Third is an apprehensive, heavyset woman named Cassandra, 22. She cried when Tyra cut up a Gucci bag on a previous show and spent part of her student loans on “electronics, bags and clothes.” For every year she is alive, she has accumulated $1,000 in debt.
The contest was eating one’s favorite meal after it was blended. The contestants’ meals below:
Carrie: Raw scallop sashimi with soy sauce and cheesecake for dessert
Daphne: Penne ala vodka, sautéed spinach. Hot fudge sundae for dessert.
Cassandra: Shrimp cocktail, 3 cheese rigatoni and crème brulee
While I thought Cassandra was the winner, Daphne was deemed the winner, but only after Tyra gave her 10 seconds to puke while making gagging sounds in her ear.
It’s said everyone has their price, but it’s another for a price to be the leather formed representation of a unattainable lifestyle.
Perhaps it’s the last thing people like this need, then to feel bad when after debasing themselves they still don’t have anything to show for it. Tyra, these three girls need therapy at worst and a realignment of their priorities and self-worth at the very least.
At this point, as long as you can provide the cash, someone out there will provide the entertainment. Yet, this to me goes beyond a show topic and picks on people with low self esteem and not enough common sense.
I find it particularly sad how much self worth these people literally carry on their arm.
