A House United: Extreme Makeover Home Edition Hits Bridgeport

(As printed in the Fairfield Weekly, August 9, 2007)

It was a well-planned and perfectly organized swarm of blue worker bees—hundreds and maybe thousands of volunteers all dressed in ABC-TV-issued blue t-shirts—that changed the lives of East End Bridgeport's Brown family forever last week. And all it took to fuel the swarm was a few plates of ziti and chicken wings and nonstop water bottles and Micalizzi's Italian Ice handouts. All that, and the inspiring story of the Brown family who, according to press releases and news reports, is a strong and active binding force in the East End community even while they were living in complete destitution.

"Hey, if they can do it, why can't we?" was the feeling among the coming-and-going volunteers that decidedly did not want the Browns living in a junky house anymore. The Brown house was once half-burnt to a crisp, it was once burglarized to a pulp and it was once the ugliest, saddest house on the block. Now it's beautiful, it has a picket fence and I doubt this family will ever forget the fact that hundreds of complete strangers built it in a week's time. I've also heard that all three kids are getting full scholarships to Western Connecticut State University and the mortgage on the house is completely taken care of.

Not bad. Thank you, old trusty television! Where would we be without you? We'd be poor and uneducated, living in an ugly house, that's where.

I, and many other volunteers I talked to, couldn't help but wonder if Extreme Makeover, having chosen a poverty-stricken neighborhood for the build, would equip the house with an insane security system, but it remained to be seen at the time. I guess we'll have to wait until the show's October air date to find out for sure.

I volunteered on Monday night for about five hours after the Post, News 12, and various radio stations announced an extreme need for help that day.

When I arrived, the volunteer coordinator told me to go home and scrounge up some tools and return to Seaview Ave. It was there that I picked up a blue shirt and hard hat and took a school bus down to Hollister Ave. I never used the tools I brought, nothing hard fell on my hat and the shirt was 15 sizes too big. But that stuff didn't matter at all. The people I met were nothing but happy to be there, even when we were just standing around waiting to be told what to do, which was often.

At one time, there might have been 15 people working on the roof, five people handing out ice-cold wash rags, 30 people nailing siding to the house, 40 people sweeping and gathering trash, 25 people painting walls inside and 20 hanging off to the side waiting for someone in a yellow or red hard hat to tell them what to do next. But everyone was safe. And everyone was helping everyone.

Camera crews hovered all over, mostly picking up on any drama they could find and sometimes stopping the construction progress to get a shot of one of the hosts. And while I didn't get a glimpse of Ty Pennington in all his spiked-hair glory, he'll most likely be in more than half the shots they include in the show.

At one point I was instructed to help lift a gas stove and oven into the kitchen, but there was some confusion over whether or not a range was part of the plans. Steve Gulick, co-owner of the company in charge of construction, stood with me and fellow volunteer Ford Smith (Gulick's Fairfield neighbor) as we waited for a decision and he pointed out the towering camera aimed at us. We imagined a time-lapse scene showing the three of us standing still while workers sped by. Hey, if it happens, I'm the tall guy in the huge blue shirt, and so is Mr. Smith.

We heard rumors of being an entire day behind, but now, since the house is done and the family is living there happily, I wonder if the rumors were started just to get the workers to move quicker. If so, they worked. If not, well, they still worked.

Last week's workers went in strangers and came out experts in non-verbal communication. Grunts and inaudible yells were easily translated into orders, and orders were quickly translated into action. Lessons-learned include the fact that six people working together for six minutes can clean an entire yard and five people working together for 30 minutes can paint an entire room. People came and went all day and all night for a week and if they didn't stop and look at the progress, it was already too late to see it.

To think what it would be like to be on the receiving end of the show's famous "Door Knock," it's a wonder the Browns didn't pass out when they were chosen. Hey, family, wanna go to California? Yes, it's free. Yeah, and when you come back you'll basically live in a castle. Also for free. Sound like something you can handle?

Fred Brown (16), upon seeing the house last Wednesday, answered with back flips and handstands; Bobbi (17) and Jana'e (14) fell to the ground, and their perfectly jolly mother threw her handkerchief-grasping hands in the air. It was Habitat for Humanity meets The Price is Right and for every part of the program that's a silly reality show, there's an equal part that really makes it a really amazing, happy idea.

Could the hand of God be involved? More likely, it was the hand of some ABC-TV executive who chose Bridgeport for CT's film industry tax breaks.

But that doesn't matter: Even in these war-torn times, or whatever, it is virtually impossible to have doubts about humanity after volunteering and witnessing the hundreds of strangers working together for the first and probably only time.

Gathering of the Hippies: Good Vibes for Everyone

(Published 8/15/07 in Fairfield Weekly)
If you’re curious about what traveling with the circus is like, living with the smelliest and craziest people on the planet on the hottest days of summer, or if you’ve ever wanted to party with men on 12-foot stilts spinning in the sun, ignoring all your brain cells to the point of complete musical serenity, go to the Vibes next year.

Will we host it next year? G.O.V. Communication Director Jon Lobdell said, “We are very hopeful to be welcomed back. We loved it there.”


And what’s not to love? Picture the usually empty fields of Seaside Park filled with thousands and thousands of hippies, hundreds of tie-dyed vending tents and a giant yoga peace circle, and you’ve got an idea of the overwhelming and totally unbelievable sight last weekend. Mr. P.T. Barnum sat in his giant chair looking out to the ocean and had no idea what was going on behind him. Maybe that’s good, but I’d say he was missing out.


Until the place was cleaned Sunday night, every picnic bench was taken, every trash can was filled and all the lush green grass was trampled. Native Americans cried single tears all weekend and the hippies were too high to notice. But we were all a part of the “Vibe Tribe,” and I saw so many people picking up cans and bottles all weekend that I was moved to do the same. There were reminders all weekend to recycle, to keep the place looking better than last week and even to pick up your neighbor’s trash. And most people did.


Only the baseball fields were off limits to campers and no space was off limits to drug-dealers. You have to listen close, though, or you could miss out (but maybe that’s a good thing). “Rolls” are ecstasy pills, “doses” are LSD, “headies” or “nuggets” means pot, “tabs” is usually acid, “boomers” is shrooms and “yip yap” is cocaine. Oh, beautiful Bridgeport park, how innocent you were with your small-scale drug dealing before this jam-packed insanity rolled on through.


George Clinton showed everyone why “Funk is so Loaded” by requesting a bowl from the crowd, and receiving one. The Deep Banana Blackout came out donned in black suits, and the normally-shirtless Fuzz kept his on the whole time. Jen Durkin and Bob Weir were at the top of their festival game, playing with almost everyone Friday and Saturday, each time more energetic than the last. Keller Williams did not play as a bluegrass trio the whole time (as predicted last week), layering together recorded clips of his own live music for at least two mind-blowing solo jams. Les Claypool scared everyone with his pig mask and wildly eccentric bass solos before removing the mask and playing with Weir and a drummer in one of the most confusing performances of the weekend. The Wailers revived all Marley’s songs with great Jamaican energy and was a common favorite from what I heard on my many walks to and from the camping area.


Life at the festival was hot, sweaty, hungry, thirsty, and it reeked of pot. The cops don’t care though, and the kids think it’s tobacco. The point is to get as gross as possible and survived hell with a smile. If world-famous “hippie geezer” Wavy Gravy can, anybody can. The man was the human manifestation of psychedelic mushrooms, announcing tripped-out revelations about space and time before each band.


Maybe you went into the event totally unable to dance. You might not like sitting in a shade-less sun-blazed field for eight hours and you might not want any of the overly-available drugs. But none of that really matters. It’s all about hearing great music, trying to find the shade, loving your fellow man and woman and dancing like an absolute idiot.


You let go of everything outside the fenced perimeter and allow the music to seep in through your red, raw skin. Work doesn’t matter, traffic is a long-lost worry and clean clothes are pointless to the point of being hilarious. Become an animal, jump in the mud and come along for the ride. You’re not in a cubicle anymore, and you’re not even stuck doing yard work. It’s just feel-good funky music playing from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. for no other reason than to help you wiggle in the sun. Joyful adults, laughing children and a completely friendly attitude that’s different from anything you can find anywhere else. People literally travel across the world for this sort of thing.

I knew the whole gathering of the Vibes scene was especially unorthodox for the Bridgeport area. But what I couldn’t figure out was whether it was because the festival was so close to pristine towns like Westport, Southport and Fairfield or if it was because the festival was actually in Bridgeport. These festivals usually take place in the middle of nowhere, in an abandoned farm in Ohio or upstate New York. With so many attempts to advertise the changing perceptions of slummy B-Po this year, it seems the Vibes weekend was a real “Bridgeport. Who Knew?” moment.

Jack White Handed Me His Microphone

*****Sorry this is the only picture I have. This is not what I expected to happen. I had to choose between using my photo pass and keeping my front row spot. You can ask anyone in the front row with me... it was a difficult group decision to make. If I had used the pass, I would have had to leave the seating area after the alloted 3-song time period you get in the photo pit, and there's no way I'd be able to fight my way back up to the front.*****

Wednesday I saw Jack and Meg at the Wallingford Theater, which is in the middle of Nowhere, CT. It was there that I stood front row, right in front of Meg for a show that made '07 feel like '67. I felt like I was in the crowd for a Jimi Hendrix show.

Jack wore bright red pants, a bright red shirt, and a pair of bright red aligator leather shoes he jumped around in all over the bright red slick floor his incredibly well-dressed stage hands (pictured below) had put there for him. His iconic shadow lingered on the bright red wall behind him as he tore ass through each blues-smothered song, especially when he played keys and guitar at the same time. Or when he pressed the guitar up against the stairs and the mic stand, because who uses fingers to play guitar? Or when he moon-walked across the stage. This guy knows all the tricks. Oh, and Meg is very sexy. I have no idea why anyone would divorce her, but I trust Jack's decision. She was simultaneously silent and ear-shattering and her sassy attitude was priceless. I've completely fallen in love. She's a sly little coy beauty who, along with Jack, belongs in another time period entirely.



Me and my small Asian sidekick showed up to the event 3 hours early. We had GA Pit tickets, so we were determined to be front and center. But we were not determined enough, it seemed. If at some point you ever decide you're a really big fan of something... you're probably not. And while obsession isn't always a bad thing, let me tell you about the time I went to a White Stripes concert and saw a bunch of fans that made me sick, made me hate fans and made me pissed to be a fan....

There is always someone showing up for the show earlier than you. And we didn't care, this was a concert. We'd done our part to shwo up early and we were excited for what Jack had in store for us. This was his and Meg's night and we just happened to be there. This was a White Stripes concert, the only real concert left for us these days. We were all in this together, but these fools were ready to kill to get what they wanted...front and center. If the Whites knew about these people, they would have left.

As the pompous ones formed a line at one door to the seating area of the theater, the decent folks (me and my new friends who shared my disgust) banded together and formed their own line at another door on the other side of the rear of the theater. For the next 45 minutes the two lines remained at war until the dickhead line got let in first. We ran down stairs, throw hallways and right up the stage. It was, as I'd assumed, big enough for everyone. The decent folks helped eachother out, once more people came. We saved spots for eachother on the front line when someone went to the bathroom or the merch table.

It was exactly the way a concert should be. A celebration of the one thing that has the power to fill the world with color and sound and meaning: real music made by real people, seemingly untouched by anything evil. Jack and Meg have found a way to produce pure creativity and pure energy, without a filter and without apology. But who'd ask them to say sorry?

I found the setlist on a few sites, but only one gave me what I wanted. I wanted to know the name of the song that Jack asked me to sing. That's right...you read the headline...he handed me his fucking microphone. It was during the encore, and Blue Orchid was over. Jack had started a new song, and I was surprised to have never heard it.

I was singing along for virtually the entire show, but I had to just listen to this one. It could have been a minute into the song, it could have been five...I'll never know, but he stepped out of his red-heaven stage setting and walked up to the front of the stage where no lights could find him. Right in front of me. He's singing, playing guitar, and towering over me. I reached up for a fist-pound and locked eyes screaming something. Then he handed me (or maybe it was the girl next to me) the microphone. She got it first and just held it. Still as death. She handed it to me. Jack mouthed the words to me. I stopped screaming and actively dropped my jaw. I was as stone-still as anyone should be when Jack White hands you something. I screamed "OH SHIIITTTTTTT" into it and passed the mic down the line of people reaching for it. Someone yelled "You're excellent!" but nobody knew the words to the song. Priceless. Awkward, too, I guess...but priceless.

The man in red walked back to his red zone and I think I saw him laughing at us. His classy stagehand yoinked the mic back by the cord and he put it back in the stand. Jack went right into "Ball and Biscuit" and the crowd went wild for the impromptu keyboard solo he slipped in there.

I don't know if you've ever gone to a concert hoping to actually get on stage and spend some time with the band, of course not actually believing it'd happen, but I felt like it'd had just happened to me. Turns out the song I was supposed to sing (Party of Special Things to Do) was released by SubPop in 2000 as a 7-inch single. It goes for $50 on ebay now. It's like the rarest song they've got or something, and he basically asked me (and the girl next to me, whatever) to sing it with him. I think I have nothing more to say about that show, but that'd probably a lie.

Thanks for reading...here's what they played:

Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
Yer Blues
I Think I Smell a Rat
Icky Thump
Sugar Never Tasted So Good
Hotel Yorba
I'm Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman
The Big Three Killed My Baby
Now Mary
Catch Hell Blues
I'm Slowly Turning Into You
The Same Boy You've Ever Known
As Ugly As I Seem
300 M.P.H. Torrential Blues
Astro/Jack the Ripper

Encore:
Blue Orchid
(Captain Beefheart’s) Party of Special Things to Do
Ball and Biscuit
I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself

Spoon Review: Go Ga Ga Over "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga"

(Published in Fairfield County Weekly, July 18)
http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=1924
http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=1940



A love affair with a band usually goes like this: You hear their first album, love it, then move onto their second, third, fourth and they all start to sound like a sad old man with no remaining original thoughts.

A love affair with Spoon, on the other hand, will bring you nothing but whatever the musical equivalent of obsessively passionate sex is. From the get-go, Spoon has been churning out fantastic stand-alone albums, regardless of label problems and representation issues in the late 90s, each one somehow better than the last. Now with six, the experimental and minimalist Austin, TX rock band is being referred to in some circles as the best rock band on the planet. If they’re right, and you don’t know Spoon, you’ll find out about them soon enough. Like, now.

That’s the joy of this band, you feel like you’ve found a treasure. They have some Kinks, some Stooges and some Rolling Stones and they have the same investigational spirit of Radiohead or a relaxed David Bowie, but they remain their own entity.

I got their new CD, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, a few weeks ago (a big thanks to self-proclaimed zombie, Drew Taylor) and haven’t stopped listening to it since. If I’ve taken it out of my car, it’s only been to show it off. Hey, people, listen to this! Listen to what some of some fellow humans beings are capable of!



Spoon is known for minimalist piano and guitar-driven rock melodies, backed usually by some light and detailed Jim Eno drums. Their danceable, slick vibe never fails to fill a dull moment with elaborate color. On this album, which is a 36-minute stylistic combo of Kill the Moonlight, Gimme Fiction and Girls Can Tell, the lyrics are sneaky and brilliant and the vocal style is crisper and bouncier than ever. After seeing them at a fully-packed Toad’s Place in April to promote Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, I gained some insight into Daniel’s teasing approach to the microphone. He’s got this emotionally charged step-forward, step-back, Mic Jagger-like rock approach that’ll get any crowd worked up.

Daniel’s guitar on this album goes from deep and smooth to spastic and chunky making for an anything-but-dull sound. The thumping piano, perfect backing vocals and other eerie screams and whispers get the job done and make you wonder why other bands aren’t as efficiently weird and experimental as Spoon. The whole album feels like inspiration. Forget the iPhone, go buy Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. If you put it on in the car you might invent something.

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga comes complete with howling swing trumpets on “Underdog” and “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb,” which is the best song on the album. Fans of the song “Jonathan Fisk,” off Kill the Moonlight, will love the jogging bass drum on “Cherry Bomb,” never mind the explosively catchy vocals. Flamenco guitar stylings decorate “My little Japanese Cigarette Case,” which seems to be Spoon’s witty version of Clapton’s “Cocaine” and some recorded talk-back on “Don’t You Evah” and “Eddie’s Ragga” help bring you right into their recording studio where all the peculiar decisions were made.

The new single, “Underdog,” was a clever choice, as it spells out an important message about corporate ignorance and the American tendency to overlook music that’s hard to find. If you really think the only power in the music industry lies in the hands of the big four, you’re going to get bit. Bit by bands like Spoon. I can only hope this single won’t be on the Disney’s Underdog soundtrack because that would take some serious steps toward negating every positive I say about them. But they won’t do that.

With Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon brings energetic and self-motivated indie rock to a new level, which, at 36 minutes, nobody but Spoon can accurately do.

Let's Go Rob a Bank

(Published in the Fairfield County Weekly, 7/11)

Good news for everybody out there who’s a little low on cash or who’s a little bored of the daily grind. Try something new and exciting. Rob a bank. Be a bandit for a couple days.

Bank tellers and lackadaisical bank policies are helping to put Fairfield on the map as the “Connecticut’s Most-Robbed County” this year, with around 17 so far and a record-breaking five in Norwalk in one month. Fairfield might even surpass the record set last year, with 21. Tellers are accepting simple hand-written notes in place of checks or withdrawal slips and have an abundance of extra money sitting around.

You don’t need to be courageous, armed or even cause a scene. No gun was shown in any of these cases, no people got down on their stomachs and no snipers were called in. Just a couple of guys with a clever idea to get rich, that’s all. The two biggest players have been arrested already, so the town needs a new burglar-hero. Don’t let the prospect of a bright orange jumpsuit hold you back. Jail comes and goes. These dudes will be out soon, and so will you!

Just follow the lead of the “white, olive-skinned male” who robbed both the Bank of America branch in the Dock Shopping Center Friday and the Chase Bank on Main St. in Bridgeport, along with two others in the area. His name is Carmine Delgaizo and he was arrested in Westchester in late June. It seems he was the first to use the note idea, simply passing a note to the teller, implying the presence of a gun.

Or, you could follow the lead of the thin 6-foot tall black man, later identified as Anthony Thigpen, also arrested, who robbed the People’s Bank in Stratford, the Bank of America in Fairfield by the Kings Highway Cutoff, and three others. This guy knows irony. He wore a white shirt with the picture of a dollar bill on it when he robbed the one in Fairfield. That almost makes it OK, doesn’t it?

It seems the two have been the busiest of any others, totaling at least nine combined heists together. Each man walked away with “an undisclosed amount of cash” every time. No questions asked. And look at his picture of Delgaizo. Do you see the shit he’s eating with that grin? Not only will this note idea make you rich, it’ll apparently raise your self-esteem! Act quick, because last year’s robbery record won’t get broken by itself. There are only 5 months left. And, who knows when these tellers will end their generosity. Don’t know about you, but an undisclosed amount of cash sound pretty nice. So, start brainstorming on clever ways to let your favorite bank teller know “that this is a hold-up,” because there’s money out there to be had.