the future of jewish rock and roll, the fight for the dry cleaning

you know, i was very curious about this concert being held for hurricane katrina. it wasn't spoken so much of here at stern, aside from the posters, but the poc purported (har) to be very good friends with the bands and vouched for their musicality, so i came. and of course there is the deja vu factor. that could have been my father, i kept thinking, glancing at the posters in the hallways. that could have been my dad's band. in homestarese, i had to see how it all went down.

so i talked my roommate into going up to yu with me to check out the concert.

thus was the girl contingent of the audience formed.

to be honest, there weren't that many guys either. the poc says this was apparently anticipated; blue fringe cancelled, these guys aren't big name bands, etc. the bands were omek hadavar and another band. but i thought this was ny, the bustling city of jewish music; so i was expecting, at a college event, come on, half the school to come. at least people.

i can count most of the attendees on one hand. me, shifra, the president of stern student council, the poc, the poc's friends daniel and josh, and a few other guys. plus the one man who organized the event, and his girlfriend. rows and rows of empty chairs. thirty to forty people, i think.

i always thought my dad's concerts were small because they were in milwaukee. now i imagine he must have been used to it even then.


anyway, the acoustics were terrible, but the first band, omek hadeebor, really made the best of a bad situation anyway. i can't say that they are musical anomolies, but they do have a nice, cool sound...lots of reverb, lots of ringing notes. before my father can interject, not u2...they were not rock at all. very lush, heavy on piano and chili pepper/coldplay chords. the drummer had more than one kind of beat, they had timing, they had a certain atmospheric grace and harmony...i actually enjoyed them very much, as did shifra. even though the bass player was absent (somewhere my father is banging his head on the keyboard). omek hadavar, folks. vote for them.



the second band was a little too ai-yai-yai-yai for me. heavy on minor acoustic guitar chords and lots of strumming, and the singer's voice didn't do it for me personally...it grated too much with the jangly guitars. they did have one surprisingly cool song, or bits of it, in english, but overall, they impressed me less than the first band. to be fair i was not paying attention most of the time. you see, there this was this one social butterfly of a stoner providing bountiful distractions. he was so clearly on something it was almost hysterical. he loved every song and requested songs they hadn't even written, moshing up front to a slow, sad ballad. me and my friends were just looking at each other like, ok! sure!


at that point the concert, in all its glory, wound to a close, which is where i found out that-- surprise! -- the girlfriend of the guy who arranged it is my famed charlotte! my radio friend from before yu, who gave me all the contact info. she is extremely sweet and i was glad to meet her and rather surprised to find her in person. she recognized me by my hair and shirt.

shifra and a friend of the poc had the brilliant idea of touring the scary campus of yu in an attempt to make it less scary (actually, this was my brilliant idea, but i am feeling generous). this was the truly fun part. the poc has a very distinct sense of what is important about yu. for example, he glossed over the classroom buildings and the dorm rooms with a kind of cursory, 'there are just classrooms in here,' or 'that's where i live' or 'oh yeah, there's the park.' but he diligently pointed out every drug dealer and brothel in disguise. 'and if you think they're really selling what it says on the sign...'

and then we came to the bane of the poc's existence, the dry cleaner.




i suppose this story requires some backup, and ideally, i would have the poc tell it to you. but even thinking about working that out gives me a headache, so i'll just tell it to you loosely. the poc has dry cleaner woes. he takes his shirts there to get them pressed for shabbos etc bkz it is like 1 75 a shirt, which is a hell of a lot less than where i live. but there is a fundamental problem with this:

they crack his buttons.

apparently every time he goes to pick up his shirts, more of the buttons have been split in two, so he can't even sew them back on (or have his mom sew them back on). he watches helplessly as one by one his shirts are debuttonized. finally this afternoon, he went to pick up his shirt, and they told him they couldn't find it at all.

now the poc is not an agressive person, but there is only so much abuse a person in need of shirts can take.

so after various threats at and unimpressed shrugs from the woman behind the counter, the poc managed to get in the back for a search-and-rescue mission of his shirt. which was a white shirt, undistinguishable, one would think, from any other white shirt.

boy, i thought i was going to tell you this loosely, and it is becoming an Epic.

well whatever. i already spent this much time on it.

keep in mind that me and the poc have been plotting to overtake the dry cleaner for almost a week now.

anyway, to make a long story short, when the poc finally found his shirt, it was crumpled up on the floor, stained and dirty and nowhere near being done for shabbos. this was the straw that broke the camel's back. er, the poc. through his extreme powers of persuasion, he got a free dry cleaning for his shirt. but we both agree that this was not nearly compensation enough, especially taking into account the mental anguish of the cracked buttons. thus the above picture of the poc vowing revenge upon the dry cleaner.

then i came home and munched upon multi-grain cheerios.

ok, seriously, i think that is it. my roommates are all abandoning me. i miss shifra already and she's still here singing at the top of her lungs. but the poc is coming for shabbos, so at the very least, we will see how the shirt turned out. plus, he has promised to get me actual food here on shabbos. through his tremendous powers of bribery and persuasion. so, i have some hope of actually getting fed and milldy entertained this shabbos. really, that is all i ask.

cause next week...i will be home.

oh yeah! i got my radio show! tune in on thursdays at eight, seven central - wwww.wyur.org! i play cool music! er, at least, i plan to G-d willing.