The Winter of Phil

...not nearly the ring that "the summer of George" has but, hey. Loosely, it entails (once I complete my grad school applications, hopefully in a couple of weeks) reading more, as I've amassed a modest "to-read" pile in the past year, running (Rob is trading his bureau for a treadmill... thank you, craigslist), delving into some old video games (hey, what can I say)... and less seriously, booking gigs for the side project of all side projects, Rob's Chicken and the Mint 400, Rob's vehicle for musical idiocy.

All joking aside though, I've been playing more with Frankie D. lately, which has been, in the words of Dr. Teeth of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, the rock band from the Muppet movies, "so fine and laid back and mellow and profitable." We played at the Pearl River Hotel (which is not a hotel) last weekend and Nyack local Marco (singer/guitarist) sat in with us on a couple tunes including "Fly Like an Eagle" which was more fun for me than it should have been. It was off-the-cuff, unrehearsed, and sounded great, as most of the band already knew the tune... I had a blast playing too much organ on it and hitting 3-part '70s-esque background vocals with Kevin, our drummer. Good times. Anyway. I am booked for New Years with the same band, and have a Contraband "reunion" gig tonight at Casa del Sol, so, that's all cool...



So basically, all I've got obligation-wise lately are these (damn) applications. School is done (and I did real well; we'll see if it helps me or not). I've admittedly been dragging my feet a little, as the personal statement is not coming so easily. ...I hope I can look back on an entry like this months from now when I get accepted somewhere and think "I'm glad that's over" but... not there yet. Short of what I have to do on my end I'm still waiting on some letters of recommendation, actually, from the Brandeis professors, as well as my official GRE scores... once all this is done I can kick up my heels a little (more) and be on a get-home-from-work-and-have-nothing-I-have-to-do schedule similar to that of my apartment-mates... then come spring, if I get in somewhere, I'll have the summer to figure out travel and $ logistics for the fall...

Not much new music in my life, partly due to the loss of my iPod in the accident over Thanksgiving (I think someone must have stolen it)... I've been driving Uncle Ira's car, as he graciously left it to me until March when he'll be back from California, and listening to the few old CDs I have with me on the bumpin' stereo system. There's about 10 on rotation and I'm getting sick of them real fast... I did get a new iPod for Chanukah but I can't use it yet because my iBook only has OS 10.3 on it and the iPod is new enough it needs 10.4. Argh! All I need are the discs that came with any Mac slightly more recent than mine (~2005)... anyone out there got 'em?

The small bit of new music I have been exposed to has included Daft Punk's first album "Homework," their recent live release "Alive" (complements of Rob who reviewed it for work) and a particular Beethoven piano sonata from the Charlie Brown TV special A Boy Named Charlie Brown (the one where he gets to the national spelling bee). Homework is good, although not as happy-party-ish as Discovery; it reminds me more of a Thievery Corporation album. The live one is alright. And the Beethoven sonata (no. 8, "Pathetique") just struck me, I guess... slow, almost jazzy... some nice dissonance... anyway.

Walden Pond

From our Boston trip a few weeks ago.

I have been listening to...

Land of Talk. They just put out a 7-song EP and I can't stop listening to it. They've been touring with the Decemberists.



Cloud Cult, the other band we discovered that night. This is the band that tours with live painters. They also happen to write some catchy and unique pop music.



Glint's Lollapalooza contest rivals, Helicopters (if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess). While I wasn't so impressed with them live (no drummer, mostly triggers), their one song "Rotofugi" has become a kind of theme song for my one night in Chicago.



Robert Plant's "new" stuff with the band the Strange Sensation. The music is just so cool... Zeppelin-y but also with some light, very tasteful electronics.



Aaaaand since my iPod doesn't always make it through the 1/2-hour commute to or from work or school, Smashing Pumpkins, because I have an old mix tape kicking around my car. The mellower stuff in particular.



On the more autumn-y days I seem to be "cranking" Vince Guaraldi, too. Maybe it's because some of my favorite tunes by him are associated with Charlie Brown TV specials from around this time of year...

Wond'ring Aloud

Day-to-day things are fine... classes going well, some fun weekends, the usual apartment goofiness... but I feel an overarching sense of anxiousness. I sit in class... and I wonder if it'll all be good enough. I just don't know. I'm taking such a roundabout path to try and get into grad school. Medical physics and dosimetry are such specific fields, for one thing... then throw in the fact that I've taken off of school for the past two years to play music, bring in my "eh" GPA, and... I just don't know where it leaves me. I will keep going... I'm freaking out about the GRE less and finally started studying this past weekend (I haven't registered for it yet, but as long as I take it by December I should be good for application deadlines, and I think ~6 weeks will be enough time to study)... and will apply to about 20 programs (10 medical physics, 10 dosimetry) this winter as classes at Manhattan and SUNY wind down. And then I'll have to wait until spring to find out if all this was... well, good enough. I sure hope it will have been...

Frankly, I'm just not sure if I'll get into any of the medical physics programs. My grades are only o.k. and sometimes I feel like "that's that." On a recent upswing I looked a little deeper at the admissions policies for all the programs and started feeling a bit more positive about maybe two of them... argh! I just don't know. It's not going to stop me from applying. And I'm wondering if, in the event of only getting accepted to a dosimetry program, I could complete that, find a job shortly thereafter, work -with- a medical physicist as a dosimetrist does, designing treatment plans, for a little while, then possibly re-apply to the physics programs, with (relevant) work experience under my belt and maybe have a better shot at getting in...?

Part of my doubts stem from my questioning the quality of the classes I'm taking now. They're all pertinent to medical physics/dosimetry, whether cited as pre-reqs on the program websites (chemistry, anatomy and physiology, intro to computer science) or more directly applicable like atomic & nuclear physics and radiation biology, but... there are times it's apparent that SUNY Purchase and Manhattan just aren't Brandeis. I guess I shouldn't name names on a public journal like this but I have one teacher who is a bit of a flake. That and, plain and simple, a course of the same title at Brandeis would be more challenging. So I'm sure I'll do fine in the class but I do wish I was getting more out of it. The physics class is good... I like that there's only three people in it, and I like the professor. The first half of the semester will have been mostly review (modern physics, wave mechanics, etc.), which I do feel funny about sometimes, but honestly, I think it will have been good for me, since it has been so long since I've studied that material. The second half will be particle physics which I haven't studied so, I look forward to that. The radiation bio course has more of a straight-ahead feel... 10-question quizzes, a paper due at some point, those kinds of things... although not extremely difficult, I am getting a lot of out it, as it's arguably the class most pertinent to the field I want to get into. I really like the textbook, for one thing. And I am meeting with the teacher on Wednesday to discuss my application plans. I am planning on asking either her or the physics professor to write my third letter of recommendation come application time. ...I am realizing now that this was something I had been worrying about in months prior, enough so that I was considering not even applying to any of the programs, but I have since locked down two recommendations from Brandeis and am, as stated above, now figuring a third from Manhattan should come pretty easily. So... that's good.

With all of this in mind, I can't help but wonder, at times, what would have happened if I had gone to a different school as an undergraduate. If I had gone to a school like Manhattan, which although good, isn't quite a Brandeis, and had gotten a 3.3 GPA, ...? Then what? A big "what if," admittedly (what one isn't?), but it does make me think. My GRE score wouldn't have changed, fine, but I bet I would've felt a lot better about myself and may have applied to graduate schools right away. Hm. The question is, would I actually have been in better shape admissions-wise? Water over the dam, I guess. We'll see if a 3.3 average over just 6 classes, some of which are first-year ones, will impress anyone. Mom seems to think that my "unique story" and the fact that I may be a bit older than the typical applicant ("adult students are better students"...?!) will set me apart/help my case but, and I could've summed up these four paragraphs with just this phrase, I'm just not sure...

I wanted to write a bit more, on music I've been listening to, and recent weekends, and other stuff, but this is long enough as it is so, stay tuned...

A Tale of Two (Univer)sities

Yup. Three classes at Manhattan (as many as I could take as a part-timer) and one at SUNY Purchase. I'm certainly getting a flavor for different types of colleges... the former small, private, and Roman Catholic affiliated (in stark-enough contrast to my medium-sized, also private and although not officially affiliated decidedly Jewish alma mater), the latter a public state school.

Hm. I'm sitting here realizing that if I had typed this earlier in the week, like I originally wanted to, it would have had a more negative vibe to it... I was bummin' about my physics problem set, freaking out a little about money, and I guess just generally disappointed that I wasn't spending enough time on homework. Truth be told, I haven't had that much so far... the quizzes in Radiation Biology have been pretty easy, we've done most of the "homework" for CoSi in class... but still, there's obviously a lot I could have been doing, like just reading the textbooks, or studying for the GRE, of course, or even more long-term stuff like getting organized to apply to these grad programs...

Anyway... here it is, Friday, and, per the usual, I just feel better. Short of the "yay, the weekend's here!" feeling, I opted not to go see Eureka Gold in the city on Wednesday so I could have a solid night to work on homework (although there was a brief impromptu chili party at Jacobs' up the road in lieu of the concert) and that felt good. I handed in my problem set before heading into work today (I've said it before and I'll say it again: thank god for a flexible boss/work schedule). The problems seemed to get easier as I went along, for the most part, which was deceiving. I could have felt more confident on 3-4 (out of the 14) problems, though. In the coming weeks I'll be able to hit the professor's Thursday office hours, now that Rosh Hashanah has come and gone, so I feel good about that too.

When I moved into Kevin and Rob's, I cleaned out the storage room and made it into a kind of study. I have yet to reattach the door (someone removed it at some point), but even without it I think it's proving to be succesful. All that's in there (other than some storage stuff) is a desk, bookcase, and an only-so-comfortable chair. I -go- to the study, to study... it just seems to work.

The new living sitch is good. Rob and Fitz are my friends, we're all just on the same page more, blah blah etc. Heh. The one last thing to take care of is the fact that my room has no real fourth wall... maybe too hard to explain here but basically what past occupants had used as a "wall" was three large moveable closets, side-by-side, coming just shy of the opposite wall but about three feet short (ha! That was the name of a band we played with once) of the ceiling. I had envisioned a Home Depot-y solution, but haven't had the time to really focus on it... I hope whatever I come up with is feasable/will work (block out noise), and I hope our (thus far pretty lax) landlord won't mind...

The Olive's gigs these past few weeks have been really pretty fun. Just, mostly "on." Good jams... and accurate, energetic versions of the covers. Seth and I have been teasing Pink Floyd's "On the Run" (the fast synth-and-hi-hat track on Dark Side) after our usual "Breathe -> Time -> Breathe" medley. This is a testament to how fast the two of us can play! ...alright enough bragging. Heh.

Last weekend was fun. We discovered two new bands and hit the Village pub crawl for a buddy's bachelor party. At the end of the night we made our way to the Bowery Ballroom (cool venue!) to hear the London Souls and the aforementioned two bands (which we had actually discovered the night before in Ridgewood, NJ at another show), Land of Talk, from Montreal, and Cloud Cult, from Minneapolis. Land of Talk was real indie-sounding and just, cool, very tight... a female-fronted power trio; Cloud Cult took a small page out of the Sigur Ros book, kind of "dreamy" rock/pop, and among other things, have two artists paint live on stage during their shows! Pretty cool.

Sweet?

The loan stuff went through... school starts tomorrow.

Moving next weekend! Just next door but, still.

Will I be taking too many classes? I'm registered for three at Manhattan, and one of them only meets two days a week (but is somehow still three credits, just like the other classes I'm taking... go figure), so that's not so bad, but I did want to take an anatomy and physiology course at Purchase too. It would fit into my schedule (only meets once a week, on Monday nights) and I really should take it, since it's pretty applicable to medical physics, but... would it be too crazy? Four classes and ~15-20 hours a week of work? I am trying to convince myself no, it wouldn't be too crazy. We'll see. The class doesn't start for two weeks, and is actually full right now (but I wouldn't be surprised if there were some openings during the add/drop period), so I've got time to decide.

I should be on a train going to see Shara in PA today but it turns out she had more family/wedding stuff planned than she thought. I could catch her Wednesday but I'm not sure I should take off of work so last-minute... I'll probably just wait until she's around the area for medical school interviews in October.

The Sabrina Stone gig at the Cutting Room went real well. The audience was much quieter... we -killed- on our two covers (me singing Radiohead's/Jamie Cullum's "High and Dry" and Dylan wailing on the Beatles'/Joe Cocker's "With A Little Help From My Friends" complete with background vocals by the rest of the band)... Chip was there running sound... I had a completely unpredictable encounter with Gila who I had somewhat reluctantly "given permission" to come to the show... and Rob had a pretty unpredictable night himself, which included a) approaching two homeless guys... -and- having a meaningful conversation with them, b) throwing his undershirt out of my car window somewhere on the Upper West Side, c) getting out of the car at a stoplight (shirtless) to ask the guys in the car in front of us what their license plate meant, and d) spending the rest of the ride home hanging outside the window singing god knows what into the wind. ...that's our Rob. Anyway, yeah, overall a great night. One for the books alright.













I -really- should be studying for the GREs and I'm just not. I bought the book... I wanted to get it out of the way before classes started up again... and here I am. :/ Lame. I've taken it before but I just wouldn't mind having my score bumped up even 100 points...

Vicky just left for college yesterday! Crazy!

Stoked to see some friends' bands in September... Eureka Gold is playing at the Cake Shop (may have to miss the first night of Rosh Hashanah for that one) and the ever-rockin' London Souls got a gig at the coveted Bowery Ballroom.

I played a fun gig with Glint last Thursday night. I'll call it a good way to go out (didn't I say that about the Double Door a few weeks ago?)... it was in the Village, at a place called the Crash Mansion. It was put on by Discmakers, the company a lot of aspiring bands go through for CD duplication. Glint and five other bands/artists of varying genres (the show included a classical guitarist as well as a jazz pianist) were picked to compete in an "Independent Music World Series." Long story short, Glint won, and walked away with a whole mess of new gear, studio time, showcase opps... pretty cool for the band, I must say. And me? I snagged a nice Ibanez acoustic guitar and case out of it and went to town on the open bar and free appetizers. I am guessing this was my last gig with the band, as my nutty school/work schedule begins tomorrow after a somewhat lax August.

Chopin

Not to sound like my esteemed bandmate Dylan but... how dull would life be without music?

Yesterday I was feeling a little down... just a case of the "Sundays" I guess. The past few weekends had been filled with travel, gigs, and family stuff... this weekend, just, not much going on. Rob and Dan were/are on vacation. Fitz, former neighbor Kevin (better known as "Such," an abbreviation of his last name... Suchakowski or something like that) and I went out Saturday night but it wasn't anything special. Bottom line... I was looking for something to do. So I walked over to the Clavinova and decided to try my hand at the Chopin piece I had bought a while ago. It had become just another unfinished project... maybe that's why I chose to sit down and work on it. My point is, I wouldn't call taking a crack at a classical piano piece "productive" or anything, which is what I thought would make me feel better, but it -did- make me feel better, broke the silence of the lonely apartment and provided a "flavor" for an otherwise dull day.

Anyway. So, Manhattan said I could take classes there (yay!). Now to register and hopefully get this loan... if all goes to plan, classes start... in a week! Eesh! Admittedly, I'm kinda tickled at the thought of going school shopping again... ah, new binders... ("NERD!") ...I know. It's true, though.

It's cooled down a bit, and is overcast and a little rainy today... nice. I do like this kind of weather. I'm sure it'll warm up again soon but fall isn't so far away... looking forward to it, for various reasons. Being outside... back in school... moving nextdoor with Fitz and Rob...

And in other news... Shara is visiting the east coast next week. She'll be in PA for a wedding and we haven't worked out whether we'll meet up there or in NY but we'll see each other somehow. It will have been 3.5 years since we last saw each other.

Battle of the Ants

Eesh. This whole school thing is turning into a bit of a Zelda quest... present an official transcript to the admissions office... wait a week to hear if I got "accepted" or not... obtain the magical Letter of Acceptance and bring to the old man near the river (and by "bring" and "old man near the river" I mean "fax" and "Citizens Bank student loan department")... you get the idea. I'm not even 100% certain it will all work out, truth be told. Bear in mind, I'm talking about just taking a few courses at Manhattan College as a non-matriculated student, just for the fall semester, to prep for grad school applications, not grad school itself. It was perhaps a bit shortsighted of me to assume I could just walk in and take classes at a private college like Manhattan; registering for the chemistry classes at Purchase was a cinch because it's a state/public school.

Alas, 'tis all but a sub-quest anyway... my "Ganon" (ha!) will, of course, be getting accepted to a grad program next fall. Keep on truckin'...

Rob sure is camping-happy with his new tent and outdoor gear... case in point: last night we "camped out" on the roof of our apartment. Kinda fun. It's a big enough roof that no one from any surrounding street could really see us. I'd do it again. Although that air conditioning unit wasn't exactly quiet.

Man, the random stuff you find on Wikipedia... last night after some beer, malt liquor, Ben and Jerry's and stargazing (on a bit of a "f*ck you, Monday" binge), Rob-o and I got to talking about space, the universe, etc., and I was saying how I remembered something about how part of what you see on TV static/"snow" is due to the cosmic microwave background radiation leftover from the big bang... I wasn't sure how correct I was so I Wiki'd it earlier and found that, yes, not only was I right, but that in Sweden that "snow" effect is often referred to as "Myromas Krig," or "Battle of the Ants." If that's not useless knowledge, I don't know what is.

Cautiously Optimistic

That's been the name of the game. Things have been falling into place, one at a time, but need to continue to do so... more specifically, I found a new job (boy, that month without one sure felt like longer than a month), found out I can keep it part-time in the fall while I take more classes, and got an A and a B in my two semesters of chemistry at SUNY Purchase (yay!) these past two months. ...but... I still need to be approved for this loan I applied for, and to find out if there's even room for me in the classes I want to take this fall (now at Manhattan College, in the Bronx, because they had physics classes), -and- register for, study for, and take the general GRE again. Phew. It's a lot, and it sure feels like a juggling act sometimes, but again, I am checking things off the list.

It feels good to be "here." I am busy and back to playing music for fun. I have also decided to stay in Nyack another year and am looking to move in (nextdoor) with Fitz and Rob. More on that later.

Right. The new job. I work at Music Minus One in Westchester, just over the bridge. They sell/distribute sheet music with accompaniment CDs, instructional DVDs, karaoke CDs, etc. Overall... better than the last job. Still the same kind of office-y stuff but at least the subject matter is more interesting. I am handed any number of tasks during the day... online research, calling music dealers, the obligatory data entry... definitely pretty busy. Do I miss having the down time to take care of my own life/stuff, to write e-mails to my buddies...? Sure, but the day sure goes by quicker with more to do. Bottom line... this, like all my jobs in the past two years, is temporary, and fortunately very flexible, which is just what I need right now.

Kirsten Ketsjer moved back to Denmark (aw!)...

Glint has "hired" me to play a final few gigs with them as they continue their search for a new keyboardist. It's win-win, really... not only are they paying me a bit, but I get to play the cool/bigger gigs I originally wanted to, and they don't have to cancel shows. These recent ones happen to have been at pretty cool venues, truth to tell... we played at the Double Door in Chicago last week in the final round of the "Last Band Standing" contest put on by Lollapalooza, among other things.

The Sabrina Stone group packed the house a couple weeks ago at the Bitter End in the Village, and we're playing again on the 15th at the beloved Cutting Room. Our 4-song EP just came out.

Last weekend Dad, Uncle Sam and I convened on Fire Island for a gig at a private party. Fun stuff.

(I never get a chance to wear that shirt)

Aaand... made a triumphant return to Mohonk/New Paltz last weekend for camping and general outdoor shenanigans, with Rob (of course!), Jacobs and Casey.

(pics comin' soon)

Overall it will have been a great summer, I have to say.

Stormy Monday

Whoa lord you’d better have mercy on me! …sorry. Does anyone know the Lee Michaels version (of Stormy Monday)? Well, it’s organ-y, and it kills.

Gettin’ some of tropical storm Barry over here in Ramsey…

Last week at work. It just so happens Friday (the 8th) is both my last day here at “the Kon-Min” and my birthday. So I think some of us are hitting drinks afterwards. I am happy to be leaving this job, yes, but I haven’t found a new (part-time) one yet. :/ As of now I don’t even have enough money for all the classes I want to take, so… yeah. Need to figure some shit out.

I rocked a fauxhawk last week at our Memorial Day barbecue (you know, in honor of all our fallen veterans who… had fauxhawks). I’d call it a decent success.

Class starts in a week. Excited to get this ball rolling.

Not a fan of the new Smashing Pumpkins single.

I have, however, discovered a new band… it is always nice when new music comes into my life. They are Kirsten Ketsjer, a band from Denmark that we met one lonely night while playing at the Hook in Brooklyn (our typical Brooklyn gig… sweet up-and-coming venue but not a lot of people in the audience). I liked them immediately… a very original, experimental sound. Two guitars and a drummer. No bassist. No one in the group is named Kirsten but the drummer/lead singer is female, Anja. They’ve been playing a few shows with us… this one tune they played at Club Europa last weekend, “the River,” really got to me.

What do they sound like? From a review on their website: “…ranging from simple acoustic songs to longer compositions in which summer rock, free improvisation, noise, childrens’ song and keyboard confusion succeed eachother in a surprising, sometimes cheeky way.”



Between them and some of the jams I’ve had with Seth, Andy, and Dylan at Olive’s these past few Thursday nights, I have had plenty of decidedly anti-shlock music to enjoy and it’s been wonderful.

http://www.yoyooyoy.dk/kirstenk/kirstenenglish.htm

Back to Boston

My last Boston gig with Glint, 5/11/07, at the Bulfinch Yacht Club, site of our first gig with Dylan a year ago. Full house... probably the best we've ever sounded (head nod to "our" new sound guy Chip)... then a walking tour of the city the next day.

Harvard.

It's a bear dressed as a lobster!

Perusing the merchandise at Fanueil Hall.

The Esplanade.

Givin' Arthur Fiedler a smooch.

Yellin' in Arthur Fiedler's ear.

Wouldn't be a Selesnick photo album without one of these...

Phil's first Yankee game!

Taco de Mayo

No, it doesn't make sense, but it was awesome...

Rob lookin' cool in the Shop Rite parking lot.

The spread.

The festivities begin.

Rob, Fitz, and Steph acting like they know what Andy "Rock" is talking about.

The twins. Unplanned. I'm dating one, guess which?

Ah yes, the "glint" of a margarita in a plastic cup on a hot summer's day...

Steph and I smell Rob's armpits.

Central Park!

That's right... Glint played on the band shell at Central Park, on 4/20/07. And here's the proof...

Gig site! The band shell, at 72nd St.

Prepping for the gig...

Tebaldi checkin' drums...

...BAM! Is this a sweet photo or what?! Yeah that's right, we had bubble machines.

Smirk.

Whoooa man!

The crowd.

I think this guy liked us.

I forget her real name but her band is called Kirsten Ketsjer and they're pretty cool.

Jacobs, Fitz, Rob, and Steph enjoy the day.

Oh yeah!

Cute one of Mat and Steph on one of those little boats you can rent.

The day draws to a close; Mat looks cool.

Everyone who made the day possible... Luis (merch), Adam (manager), Chip (sound engineer), Vinny (artwork, bubble machines, etc.), Bob (video/roadie), Jonathan (video), Jase (guitar/vox), Mateus (drums/web), Evan (hippie), Dylan (bass), Phil (keys).