Unless the scanning technician overlooked something...

...we're having a Malia! :)

All Up In Your Hard Drive Like A Typhoid PC Virus

(Not an MC Barman lyric; twas the only blog post title I could come up with on short notice. Do you like it? Does it sound flippant yet commanding yet “street” all at once?)

It’s been too long since I posted here, for all of the reasons you’d imagine given recent events. In short: life is expensive and I refuse to be caught without the dough to move, to pay bills, to eat, to buy formula and diapers and so on. Junior will be along, according to Alecia’s OB-GYN, in a little less than five months. Tomorrow I’m accompanying her to the doctor for a check-up, and at that time we’ll learn whether we’re having a Nodin or a Malia. A lot of you have been asking about this and trust me, you’ll know as soon as I do – promise.

Our landlady, Sonya, graciously gave us a “money tree” for good luck and what I guess you’d call a feeding seat this past weekend. (There’s a proper term for this but it escapes me at the moment.) I’ll miss her when we move; she’s been a lot easier and more pleasant to deal with than the myriad. evil landlords (companies) we’ve sparred with over the last half decade or so. We presently have the high chair (that’s it, right?) in our guest room and it’s more tangible proof that everything’s about to change very drastically for us.

Despite the somewhat disparaging tone I took here, I want to thank the Silver Jews for coming to the Ottobar last Wednesday night – finally getting to see David Berman and Co. perform many of the desolate, literate songs I’ve stuck on mix tapes or sung to myself in the car or shower while depressed or in great spirits was a long, long-awaited pleasure (even if having to scribble notes in half-darkness during the show meant I couldn’t enjoy the proceedings as much as I could have otherwise). Thanks to Doug Mowbray for coming along with me, for the world-weary damn-we’re-old-and-relationships-are-HARD-but-rewarding conversation, for the CDs, for helpfully dissecting the finer points of opener Heumann/Bell (I have a feeling I went to school with Dave Heumann’s sister a lifetime ago, but maybe not) even though the part of my review pertaining to them didn’t make it to print. (They were flat-out fantastic and you should support them if possible.) Doug stuck around for a while to get his copy of Actual Air signed by Berman, and was successful – I bugged out cuz I was exhausted and my back ached from crouching down for hours in a space that was too cramped for 6’5 me. Berman wrote “better shit’s coming” on the poetry book which bodes well for humanity, methinks.

Alecia is increasingly tired and sore and itchy and looks forward to this whole pregnancy thing being over and done; increasingly I’m psyched about parenthood and all it entails: Play dates! Car seats! Gerber’s! Baby babble! Reading to the tyke! Ooohing and ahhhing strangers! (Well, not so much that last one...)

Multiple Sclerosis Walk this weekend in Towson! (No rain, please.)

Homies Be Bloggin'

Oh yeah. Kevin, Thom (Jef), Pearl, and my wife, Alecia (who manages a band, Cryptic Warning -- they advanced to the next stage in last night's Emergenza band face-off at the Ottobar, congratulations! It was a good time, but I'm totally exhausted today -- four hours in a tiny club full of cigarette smoke, attention-hungry hipsters, and drunken bimbos will do that to you.). Matthew Perpetua, who I’ve known online for almost a decade, runs the ever-thriving, sometimes-maligned Fluxblog mp3 empire.

Seriously, I've felt like a zombie all day today, like I'm sleepwalking through life and work -- two beers, four hours of sleep, and some of the conditions described in the paragraph above were to blame. But I'm glad I went along; I met the CW dudes for the first time, watched them kick up serious metalheaded dust onstage, and some of the other bands were okay too: in particular Odd Girl Out, who reminded me of several 90s riot grrl groups but without the feminist politics (unless I missed them). The singer wasn't great, and looked a lot like Liz Phair, which was kinda weird. Their fans seemed to fit into two categories: 1) friends and possibly relatives of the female, mini-skirted asian-american lead guitarist or 2) out-and-proud lesbians (who can count among their number OGO's drummer and bassist, if haircuts and manner are anything to go by).

Job Hunt

This is your music news section on Donald Barthelme.

As many of you know, Alecia and I are moving to Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania after our child is born, and we've spent a considerable amount of time and effort trying to find work for me in the closest big cities -- namely, Harrisburg and Bloomsburg; pickings are slim. Does anyone have ideas/suggestions as to what sort of non-editor/non-proofreader/non-reporter jobs someone who has experience with the aforementioned positions might be qualified to do outside of those arenas? I have a couple months to get this going, but damn if time doesn't fly like the dickens. (I'm even considering going into public relations if nothing more preferable materializes.)

Lazy Monday

Running off the riff raff, George Clooney gave a great Oscar acceptance speech last night, a compelling case made for articles of impeachment.

Also, the obligatory music-related comment: Sunn O)))'s Black One = crunchy, doom-y, best listened to on a car stereo for some reason. (More on for-best-effect music-listening scenarios soon.)

Beatings

A week or two back, Alecia went to her OB-GYN for a check-up, and heard our baby’s heartbeat for the first time. She came home gushing about the experience, the intensity and emotion it brought and how her pregnancy suddenly seemed more real than it had previously. “Just wait til you hear it, Ray,” she said, wide-eyed. “That twipt-twipt sound!” I listened with envy, as it would be a month until the Amazing Ultrasound OB-GYN Visit where we’d see the child in utero via Utrasound technology. Would I come away with the same reaction when I heard that pulse, when I saw that grainy black-and-white real-time image?

Then, last night, Alecia pressed my palm against her stomach, and I felt that heartbeat. Felt it. Not fast, not insistent, but most assuredly present and alive and amazing and real is a way that buying my first-ever baby onesie last week wasn’t quite.

This is really happening, isn’t it?