Baby by Chipotle

Tonight L and I went out to pick up some Chipotle for dinner. We were both tired from work and our kitchen was full of broken-down boxes in anticipation of the move -- there would be no home cooking tonight. At Chip we saw the usual motley crew, and they were excited to see L in all of her pregnant glory (she is honestly a really objectively good-looking pregnant lady). One of them said she had a present for us, and she ducked in the back -- and she came back with the onesie you see above (sorry for that word, "onesie", which sounds like a game girls in Britain played in the 1940s) as well as a bib that says something along the lines of "When I Have Teeth I Will Want to Eat Chipotle Products." On the front of this onesie, it says "food goes in here," with an arrow pointing to the kid's mouth, and then on the back, it says "food comes out here," with an arrow pointing towards the rear end. This is not only factually true, but it's also classy.

We were both really touched by this. Will our child grow up to enjoy Chipotle? Yes. Will we dress her in Chipotle-branded clothing, making her into an adorably fat little billboard? Hell to the yes.

The Top Ten Songs of 2009

Whenever I need a break from (1) thinking about our mysterious incoming baby, (2) worrying about work, or (3) moping over our upcoming move from the West Village to upstate New York, I think about which songs will make my annual top ten list of the year. Music is the currency of my life, in a lot of ways, and listening to these songs already provokes such a rush of emotion and memory. Without further ado, and keeping in mind that this list is objectively correct and not up for debate, here are my top ten songs of 2009:

11. Kanye West, "Heartless" & Kris Allen, "Heartless" -- I spent a lot of time this winter listening to Kanye West's bleak, spacey new album. In January I spent several long Saturdays in Newark for continuing legal education, and I have one particularly tart memory of a late January afternoon on a platform at Newark Penn Station, waiting for the train to take me back to Manhattan, watching the snow flurry down through the overhang and onto the cold tracks below. In its own way, it was perfect. Later in the spring and summer I listened to Kris Allen's cover of "Heartless" -- he added a warmth and a fullness that was deliberately absent from Kanye's pulsing, insistent synethesizers. And, unlike a lot of acoustic/white versions of R&B or hip hop songs, Kris did not try to be cute and ironic about it. He played it straight, and the result was greater depth and some beautiful vocals. I wrote about it a little bit here.

10. Adele, "Hometown Glory" -- This summer, when I was really trying to focus on my writing and dig something deep, "Hometown Glory" was the song that opened me up to the process. When James was in town this summer we talked about this song, and I told him how this song just seemed to split me open down the middle. He asked me why this song had such an effect on me, and I really struggled to answer. Maybe the melody, I thought, or the lyrics about home or nostalgia -- but it really isn't any of that. I still don't quite know, but the song retains its undeniable alchemy, its potency. This song goes deep. I talked about it before here.

9. Drake, "Best I Ever Had" -- Ohhh! Heeeey! It's a hip hop love song, y'all! This song is so exuberant, it just makes me feel great. It makes me think of L. It reminds me of Method Man and Mary singing "You're all I need to get by." Drake's rapping and singing, finely retouched with some autotuning, seems genuine and heartfelt yet full of swag. This song makes me dance dorky to it, every time.

8. Ron Browz, Jim Jones, and Juelz Santana, "Pop Champagne" -- This was the song of the night the first time I ventured up to Alvin Ailey for some hip hop, back in January. To me this song sounds vaguely sinister, between the sing-songy chorus and spare instrumentation. Once you embrace that aggression, though, and make it work for you, this song has everything. I wrote about it a little bit here.

7. Black Eyed Peas, "Ring-a-Ling" -- This was another Alvin song. I have really come to appreciate Will.i.am as a producer, and this song, as well as "Imma Be," from the new Black Eyed Peas album, are fantastic. At Alvin, we were doing some popping and locking to this song -- two styles of hip hop I am not good at, not at all -- but this song made it work. The guys are rapping and Fergie is riding into the track on a wave of synthesizers like some kind of electronic sex goddess. The syncopated bass line and the relentless melody, skittering all over the place, capture the sheer impulse and dizzying logic of the late night call. And at the end of the song, when there's about a minute left and he finally admits what the song is about -- a booty call -- there is a slight shift in the music and you get one of those sequences that I just want to live in, when everything is working together and you can think of a million ways to fill the space the song creates.

6. The-Dream, "Take U Home 2 My Mama" -- Dream had a new album, not as good as the latter-day classic he created the last time around, but this one had its moments. This song is pure exuberance, kind of stupid, completely good-natured, like a hip hop golden retriever. This song is another good one for the corny dancing. Yet there are also a few plaintive moments in the song, perfectly balanced by his own smart-ass echo on the verses and his wordless appreciation of his paramour's assets: "her t****** like wooooooo, her booty like oooooooo." You know exactly what he means.

5. Mariah Carey, "Inseparable" -- Mariah's new album turned out to be awesome in a completely unexpected way -- she included a few slow- to mid-tempo tracks that to me captured the essence of 90s R&B. Something about the production, the wordy verses packed into the melodies, a certain sense of melancholy and nostalgia perfectly expressed in a minor key. I have read criticism of her that she doesn't sing in full voice enough, but this song, like several others in the suite, is remarkably restrained until the end, when the wall comes down and she is finally singing and emoting the hell out of it all. As she lets it all go her upper octaves come in and provide some texture, and she is off to the races. One thing I appreciate about Mariah is that I feel like her runs and ad libs are always absolutely focused and necessary - there is never a spare or inarticulate note. This song is my favorite on the album: "no one is inseparable...except for us." My neighbors must love this song too, because I sing the hell out of it whenever I can get away with it.

4. Ryan Leslie, "Out of the Blue" -- This is one of the best slow jams I've heard in a long while. I really love this guy's production, and his vocal range is right where mine is, so I have worn this song out. There is also a moment after the bridge when he is singing, at approximately 2:13-2:28, "I almost died when you left me, baby" -- and this line honestly gives me chills, even now, even when I'm running or standing on a crowded subway. For some reason he says "baby" more like "booby," and what is in his voice at that moment is so honest and genuine. The emotion in this song really strikes a chord with me.

3. Mariah Carey, "Obsessed" -- Ok, this is a dumb song. I understand that. But it was produced by The-Dream (as was "Inseparable," no. 5 above), and I just like it. I like all the broken up "oh-oh-oh-oh-oh"'s. I like The-Dream yelling "Ay ay ay ay!" in the background. Like "Hair Braider" from last year's list, this song is not particularly ingenious or clever or otherwise meritorious, but sometimes it's enough to make you get your groove on while riding the subway, tapping your foot or snapping your fingers or even flexing your butt to the music and assuming no one can see you. And any song giving a shout-out to a dude's napoleon complex is kind of funny.

2. Jamie Foxx and T-Pain, "Blame It" -- I was really late on this song, but it propelled me through the first half of the year. T-Pain's verse is more lively than Jamie Foxx's, but the chopped up chorus is irresistible. This was another Alvin song, but they played it only once, as the class was leaving and we were all filing out, so I was getting my bop on and shuffling across the floor with my jacket and my bag over my shoulder, stopping a minute to groove with the teacher and her pals. It was the kind of song and moment that I really missed.

1. Beyonce, "Sweet Dreams" -- The video to this song actually does it justice -- it captures the groove, the sensibility, the sense of strangeness. I like the ambivalence of the lyrics, the poetry, the changes in mood. I have been interested in this song for months now, thinking about the disparate elements and how they come together, and I think it's a really fascinating piece. My favorite element is the roiling bass line, which envelopes the melody and folds itself around you. Sometimes I listen to the song just to follow that low groove, listening to the song dance on top of it. And then the bass finally relents as the song fades: "Either way I don't want to wake up from you..."


So those are the ten songs that sum up this past year. If you read all this way, kudos and thanks. Once again, it's all about the music that moves me to get my groove on or sing my heart out or take a pen to paper. In a certain way, music does more for me than anything I read or see -- finding music to love is like discovering a new vocabulary, even though I feel like the words I use to describe it are so limited. But it's undeniably there.

Music makes me so damn happy.

30 Rock

Even in dark December, there are moments.

Dismantling

Strange weekend at home. My parents are moving from Virginia to Austin in a few weeks, and they have been busy packing up the house. As it happens we are moving that same day from our home in the village to the new place uptown. Originally we planned to pick up a U-Haul on Saturday in Virginia, load it up with the bed, rocking chair, wedding gifts, and books for the baby, and then drive it all back to New York on Sunday. I was nervous about timing, though, and traffic, and work. So we decided to pack up the truck and drive out late Saturday night.

As I sorted through all of the old stuff in my closet, I tried to move too quickly to feel sentimental. I let my eyes fall on old programs, tickets, letters, awards, cards, trophies, yearbooks, and threw most of it away. I saved the journals and the photos. I couldn't let myself think too hard about any of it.

Last night, after we had a great dinner with my parents and sister, we loaded the last of our stuff into the mighty U-Haul and pulled out. We left so quickly. "Don't think about what's happening right now," I said to L, and to myself. I tried to honk the horn jauntily as we pulled away into the night. That was my last time in that house, the last sight of my parents and sister waving from the driveway. Inside the house was a tangle of half-packed boxes and old objects on their way out of the house and our lives. Things had already changed.

It was a weird feeling driving through the cold night from Washington to New York. We left after nine and arrived around 2:30 in the morning. The highways were dark and vacant, no traffic anywhere. The U-Haul rattled mercilessly, cold air hanging around us in the cab as the engine wheezed below us. We listened to pop songs and NPR, kept our jackets on. As L closed her eyes in an attempt at sleep I sang along to the music just to make a sound. The string of headlights on the other side of the highway flattened into a broad smear before my tired eyes.

Driving through a cold night in a truck that isn't yours, carrying your old bed and the rocking chair from which your parents read to you as a child, from which you can still remember sitting in your dad's lap with his soothing arm around your shoulders, listening to the deep timbre of his voice and relaxing into the comfort and security of another night's sleep.

And now: we were hurrying towards a new room, a new dad, a new sleepy child. There was a reason we couldn't wait. Despite the late hour and the cold air and the thoughts kept at bay, it still felt, in its own pained way, like some kind of beginning.

Gratitude 2009

1. For my lovely wife and the clearly gifted child she is carrying

2. For friends, the ones who are seen regularly and the ones who swoop into orbit, comet-like, more rarely

3. For the family we're going home to this weekend

4. For parents who are gutsy enough to go west, looking to start fresh with the liberal politics and live music scene they so profoundly appreciate

5. For the few and hardy people at work who say "please" and "thank you," sometimes even in the context of discussing work assignments

6. For Chipotle

7. For the neighborhood where we've spent the last four years building a marriage and a new phase of our lives, anchored by the small daily relationships that somehow create such a deep sense of connection and community

8. For the three-bedroom manse waiting for us in Manhattanville, for the clean white walls and shiny hardwood floors and sky-filled windows that will soon house us and our tiny little new person

9. For the neighborhood to come, for Riverside Park and Morningside Heights and the new rituals we'll discover

10. For "Imma Be" and "Ring-a-Ling," two songs by the Black Eyed Peas that have really gotten under my skin

11. For the works of Robert A. Caro, whose massive biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson have made me think a lot about the relationship, tensions, and balance between happiness and ambition

12. For our health

13. For this moment in our lives, and recognizing the good fortune of a happy marriage, prenatal normalcy, gainful employment, and reasonably successful urban living

14. For maintaining a clear vision of how we want our lives to be

15. For the tenacity to make that vision happen

16. For yams

Some of these are thanks and some of these are prayers, but maybe that is a meaningless distinction. Happy Thanksgiving.

Changes

There were two significant things today amidst the usual daily cacophony.

First, L went to the doctor to check out the baby, our little man. And it turns out that baby...is a GIRL. It's a Girl! Not a Boy! This news left us both reeling. How did they miss this information? Are they using a sonogram or a dowsing rod? What year is this? It's very weird how you can spend a month imagining a very particular life for yourself with the utmost certainty that those ideas will be realized. For some reason the most vivid thing I could imagine was introducing my kid to other people, saying, "this is my son, X," as a shy toddler hid behind my legs. This was the vignette that gave life to otherwise abstract ideas of fatherhood, identity, and devotion. And now I am reworking those ideas, those scenarios, to wrap my mind around the idea of a daughter. It's surprising how quickly the track shifts. Worries about autism give way to questions about how girls pee. It seems as if life is now cast in a different yet more revealing light. From our little man to our sweet girl, the way it was before we even knew it. Our girl.

Second, today we were approved to sign a new lease on a three-bedroom apartment in Morningside Heights, right on the edge of Manhattanville. The apartment is on the top floor of a pre-war six-story elevator building. The rooms are large and flooded with light, with pleasantly warped hardwood floors and crisp white paint over the walls and moldings. The kitchen is large, although a little dated. L and I both realized that this was a good apartment as soon as we entered. The price was fantastic and it's right by the 125th stop on the 1 train, an easy 20 minutes from my office. It's farther north than we expected, and I worry about some of those ramifications, but now we've got it and we have a new home waiting for us. We'll be moving in around the middle of December.

So today has been a day of change. We knew these changes were coming, that this would be a season of transition. In a few weeks we will be taking our stuff and our lives and the new idea of our daughter to a new home, the place where she will enter this world and experience some love and solace and security. I feel very aware that we are entering a new stage in our lives. I can see how these last few years -- our years in the village, years of walking to the bookstore and the gym, years of idleness and books and wealth and thought -- are giving way to something else: possibly something more grounded, more tightly woven. Days of looking out over the roofs of Morningside Heights, wandering with our daughter through Riverside Park, singing her songs she can't understand yet. Teaching a new person empathy and kindness.

There is so much excitement to bear, but there are also fears and doubts. Change requires endings and beginnings, and I've never been able to face an ending without some measure of doubt and nostalgia for the places left behind. Today seemed like a a prophecy, and it left us exhausted.

Luxury, thy name is Trump

L and I had a very enjoyable long weekend at the Trump International in Miami. From the moment I opened the trunk of the cab at the Miami Airport, only to discover a tidy pair of men's briefs lying there, I knew this would be a special weekend. And it did not disappoint.

We never left the Trump compound. We hovered near the pool, splashing under its waterfalls and looking out to the ocean just beyond the deck. We ate at the Trump restaurants, unless we ordered room service, or unless I had a pina colada for my meal. I read a Richard Yates novel, "Young Hearts Crying," which was beautiful and inspiring. I read the Atlantic and the New Yorker. I kept my phone off for hours at a time. It was wonderful.


Take a look, then, at this photo, because it captures most of it. See the pink sky rolling slowly from the horizon. See the lifeguard cabana keeping vigil down by the sand. See the tips of the palm trees. See the bowl of tortilla chips. See the LBJ biography I'm starting to read. And see a pina colada, soaked in rum even up through the straw, decked out with a cherry and a thick wedge of pineapple. It was a delicious cherry.