Saturday, September 12, 2015

ADVENTURES IN CORD CUTTING – PART 8 – WHERE ARE WE NOW?


ADVENTURES IN CORD CUTTING – PART 8 – WHERE ARE WE NOW?


Twitt
I get a lot of people asking me about this cord cutting experience. And, after the last post (Number 7 if you are new to this party. I know, the order is messed up here on the ol’ WordPress) I just gotta tell ya: Nothing’s changed. In fact, we seem to be even more committed to the cut.
How shall I put this?
My wife is on board.
I think it was Grimm that did it for her. She got really addicted to the show a few weeks ago. We are kind of divided in this house. She is the Grimm-er and I’m more into the Fairybacks. I dig Once Upon a Time. Which is the cheesier of the two.
Beth started to catch up by jamming the first two seasons on Amazon Prime. I mean, she just ate up those dozens of episodes. And then, she was stuck. We had never TiVo’d them, why would we? But Hulu didn’t have the first half of this, the 3rd season. So, the easiest thing to do was find it on VoD somewhere.
Whatever she couldn’t find she just bought on VuDu. Just a few is all she needed. And, once she did that we both realized that we don’t need cable. Anything we want is just a click away, really. And if it isn’t it will be.
Could she have VoD’d it on DirecTV? Maybe. It actually didn’t occur to me to check, that’s how checked out of DTV I am.
Considering the amount of stuff we want to watch vs the amount of time we have, I just can’t justify cable or satellite.
We are living in a great age of television. Lots and lots of great tv out there. And you don’t need a satellite dish to get it.

There really is a Piper Down

THERE REALLY IS A PIPER DOWN.

Twitt
PD015
It was late 2000. 
The commercials strike had devastated my business, being an actor whose main source of income came from appearing in TV ads. I had little to do with all the free time. Auditions had completely dried up, as they would during a work stoppage. Many of my friends and colleagues started new businesses or got support jobs or just went home to their families.
I started a band. 
Like many other actors in Los Angeles I was an orphan in search of a home. Some sort of connective tissue that allows us feel worth some and not worth less. The desire to belong to someone or some thing is strong in performers. I assume it is with anyone, really, but actors seem to crave it more; the attention, the lights, some hole to be filled, some emptiness longing to be replaced with, sometimes, anything.  However, it’s not just the bond with people that we covet. Contrary to what many assume, the bohemian lifestyle, while occasionally wonderful with its virtual lack of responsibility and constantly changing environs and experiences, is just as often chaotic and disjointed. There’s really no center. No gravitational pull to keep us grounded. We just spin and jut from one class or workshop or show or audition or job to the next. Until and unless we “couple up” or start a family, some of us seek to carve that home out of the people available to us, usually they are other ragamuffins and journeymen and women who only truly shine in the limelight. 
While I spun around, in search of something grounded, the sun I would orbit was my home, a one bedroom apartment in the heart of West Hollywood. A haven, yes; a Melrose Place to call my own, with a pool that was surrounded by big windows behind which neighbors, who all knew each other, embraced and welcomed me and my daughter and were almost as bohemian as I. 
But, still, it wasn’t a family. It was, by happenstance, a collective of supportive weekday sunbathers but it wasn’t that home. I would find sanctuary in the shape of a little theater company in east LA called Sacred Fools (a company so aptly named) situated on Heliotrope Dr., a street name so suited for it housed a motley bazaar of foundlings and strays. That was where I found my family, my friends and colleagues. People with whom I would toil, for free, till wee hours of the morning making theater. A community with whom I would be intimate, both personally and physically. That dusty and creaky old playhouse just off of Melrose before the Hipster invasion, with its legendary ladder that led up to a light booth that was, supposedly, built by Harrison Ford in his pre-Han Solo days, was where I met my closest confidantes, my best and lifelong friends and, most surprisingly and satisfyingly, my wife. 
That was also where I was encouraged, by some generous and kind patrons, to start a band. 
And, just like a 13 year old self taught guitar player with dreams of pyrotechnics and groupies, that is what I did.
We called ourselves Throttle Back Sparky and we opened for our theater company’s “Music Night”, a covers and originals concert where anyone who wanted to could play. A nonstop monthly party that went to the deepest hours of the night. 
Our little 7 piece theater-rock outfit played at that theater on the night that Dubya was elected. Band members moved on and out and in, as amoebic as bands are and we morphed into other incarnations with new players, though all of them from  the house on Heliotrope until we settled on a drummer (!) and that became my family. 
And then we ventured out of the safe cloister of where we formed to the real world of the Los Angeles Rock Scene.
Our first gig was at a club that doesn’t exist anymore. The appropriately named concert hall/bar, “The Gig”. It was a dark and nondescript room where the stage perched high at the back end, elevated about two and a half feet above the ground, the bands viewable from the moment you entered the joint. It also had a curtain which would rise to present each act and a smoke machine on the stage. Oh, man, how I loved that smoke machine. When we played we would ask the stage manager for “More smoke! More! More! More!” while the curtain was down. To the point where the seven of us could no longer even see each other and I reached through the cloud to find my microphone when the show started. I wanted us to emerge from the mist like rock gods. I wanted us to be Kiss. If people paid seven bucks to see us, I wanted them to feel like they saw a $50 show. The Gig was exactly what I was hoping to play to fully embrace my Rock Family Experience. 
I used to jump from that stage into the audience pit when we would play our faux-swing song, “Great Big Mardi Gras Head”. During the guitar solo, it gave me the opportunity to show off my sweet East Coast Swing dance moves, an integral element of my lead singer courtship repertoire. (It should be noted that I married the first person I danced with during that song and my membership into “Lead Singer Lothario Academy” was summarily revoked. No regrets!)
I don’t remember who we played with on our first night. It was a blur. After the show, Martha, the club’s booker, told me that she liked us but our demo didn’t do us justice. It didn’t. It was recorded on an antiquated-by today’s standards-four track in that same theater where we were born. And it was on cassette. It was lame. And, more importantly, it didn’t sound like us. Martha thought we would work better on another bill with another band. Someone that might fit what we were about. She had just the band in mind…
We were booked. We rehearsed and got ready to play our first show with–
The Piper Downs. 
Now, look, I, along with the other members of the band, crafted a show that, like I said, was designed to give you more than your money’s worth. If we couldn’t leave you wanting more we could at least satisfy you to the point where you wanted to come back for seconds. 
And I thought we killed it that night. When I left to go home I found a note on my car from the lead singer for Four Star Mary lauding my singing voice. High praise, indeed, coming from a rock belter whose power could be felt at the back of any theater where he played.
But as strong as I thought our show was, the headliner was the real show. 
The Downs. The band with the super cool chick drummer who pounded the skins like she was inventing joy. On stage right stood that goofy lead guitarist who seemed to jump out of his skin while ripping through those rollicking licks like a guitar tech who had been champing at the bit to get his chance and finally did! On the other side, with a perpetual beam of a smile was the bass player whom we were supposed to believe was the band’s biggest liability, the clown. The one player that needed to be carried by everyone else when, in fact, he nestled perfectly in the pocket with that awesome woman behind the kit. It would come as no surprise to learn that they were actually married. Well, maybe to some, like the member of my band who was so taken by her that he was crushed to learn the truth.
And that lead singer. The guy who wrote the tunes. The Big Sexy. A songwriter whose self-effacement was actually a laser guided song-writing technique. A master with a turn of phrase who let you in on his heartbreak and his journey through power chords and infectious melody.
A personal highlight in my brief sojourn into the stream of LA Power Pop/Rock was when Bobby (Big Sexy) Bognar sang lead on my song, “Prozac Girl” at the concert that my bandmates never knew was going to be my last. It wasn’t but, damn we came pretty close. And, dammit if Bobby didn’t make the melody just that much better. He found notes that I didn’t even know I had written. 
Another highlight was when I was asked to perform A Piper Downs song with them. I clambered up to the stage at Molly Malone’s, the place that would seem to become their second home after The Gig disappeared into some grotesque bistro/bar/cafe thing, and warbled out “Madeline”.
I got through that damned song, a favorite of mine, but, truth be told, I could barely remember the words to my own songs let alone someone else’s despite how much more fluid and lyrical they may be. 
The Piper Downs are playing their last show on August 29th. In a fashion that I would come to expect from them, they are also releasing their first album in a decade. 21 songs for 21 years. And then the last of the power pop rock acts of the aughts are hanging it up for good. 
It is my hope to hear “Madeline” one more time. 
And “That Way”, one of the first songs of theirs I ever heard, before I knew who they were and one of their best. 
And “Hail”, the song they played and allowed me to sing along with when they played my wedding. (How many people can say that their favorite local band and the best unsigned band in town played their wedding???) 
Maybe I’ll get to hear “I Am a Dick” or “I Swear to God What He Calls Love” or “Hardcore” or “Louder” one more time. 
Whatever they play, it will be bittersweet. Because it means the era has really ended. From a time when a few dreamers who were a little “too tall for the ride” took over some stages in Los Angeles and created their own rawk scene. When a boy with rock and roll dreams got to play alongside some real local heroes. 
We may not have sold a million records but for a brief and shining moment the Danny Blitzes and The Andersons!s and the Four Star Marys and The Pissants and The SparkleJets U.K.’s and The Bat Countrys and The Throttle Back Sparkys and The Piper Downs had our way with the music scene just long enough to burn an indelible set of memories in the few who saw us, danced to our tunes, sang along with us, partied with us.  Those are memories I will cherish forever when I tell my son, “Yes, your father was cool…once….”
 Thanks, Piper Downs, for leading the way with generosity and encouraging us all to be better by watching you be the example of how to do it right almost every single time.  Almost, because, you know…Yell. 

Let's Get Cooking

LET’S GET COOKING.

Twitt
In 2014, after burying two husbands, surviving stage 4 colon cancer and a massive heart attack with quadruple bypass, my mother finally died. It was a capstone to a tumultuous last few years. She and I were not without our disagreements after Liz (my 13 year old daughter) died. But we always tried to find our way back to each other. She was a very supportive and sympathetic mother.  Loved her children. Loved her grandchildren. I’m not sure she liked herself all that much, however. I don’t think she trusted herself or felt safe y herself. I think loneliness was her ultimate killer.
But, I’m not doing a memorial post. This is about her last gift to me.
I love to cook.
When I was a kid I used to make my own concoctions. At 8 I was making these elaborate sandwiches that could’ve been called “kitchen sinkers” because, if I could put it between two pieces of bread, I did. I recall a Peanut Butter & Jelly and potato chip and chocolate cake thing happening at one point. When I got older I used to make my own Italian Dressing. It was terrible. But my parents ate it. Yes they did.
As I got older I became less and less…adept. To the point where I prepared an embarrassing dinner with frozen broccoli that was burnt and chicken that was inedible. That was a low point. And then it all started to change. My love of food and cooking really began in earnest at the turn of the century. I loved experimenting again. And making dinner for friends and family. It helped during parties that we would host. I could just stay in the kitchen with my chili and people would come to me and I would have a safe ground.
My love of cooking hit the apex at my son’s pending birth. I became a madman of asian cuisine. I made just about everything in the China section of Charmaine Solomon’s The Complete Asian Cookbook. I had a love affair with my wok
IMG_1258
, a brilliant and sturdy hunk of metal and wood that I got at Ikea of all places.
And, just like that, poof, I was burned out. A new baby. Training for the Aids ride (which I accomplished, all 545 miles of). Career. Life. There wasn’t any time to cook. Or energy.
And my kitchen was horrible. It still is. I went from a self-designed oversized cook’s kitchen to a galley sized one. It was depressing. We’re still working out how to make it better.
Bit by bit I came back to the kitchen. First I installed a peg board to hang just about everything that I would need.
IMG_1257
Then I got a couple cast iron skillets.  And before you knew it I was adding fleur-de-sel to brilliant frittatas and finding 10 new ways to cook Brussels Sprouts.
Then I was asked to emcee a chili cook off. One that I was entered in (I lost, hard. Which was disappointing because I knew my mistake and this was a previously award winning recipe that I had come up with). And I had to meet with the planner at a local cafe that was attached to, of all things, a cooking school.
Before I knew it, I signed up for the culinary course. 6 months. French cuisine. And I start, as of this writing, tomorrow. I couldn’t be more excited and a little scared.
I have my pants. Black and horrible kitchen clothes. I have my shoes. Black and surprisingly comfortable. I get my chef’s coat tomorrow. And my hat. And, hopefully, I learn something.
Oh, why did I go on about my mom?
She left me a little something after she died and I used that to pay for school. Her gift to me. She was always saying, “get yourself something nice.” so she didn’t have to shop. By the end of her life she would’ve been just as happy to give you her credit card to buy yourself a birthday or hannuka gift. This was her last one to me.
Thanks, Mom. Goodbye, Mom.

CORD CUTTING #12: 6 MONTHS LATER…

CORD CUTTING #12: 6 MONTHS LATER…

Twitt
It’s been a while. Hi.
We’ve lived cable free since last fall and, gotta be honest, we don’t miss it.
My kids love Netflix. There’s a lot to offer them right now and they have no idea that there is anything else out there, really.
As for the adults? The Tivo was a great idea. Really the lynchpin to the whole affair. Not that there is such great programming on the networks but, there’s just enough for two old Gen Xers to wrap around.
When it came time for The Walking Dead or Mad Men to come back, we just bought the episodes. The biggest downside is that we can’t watch a new episode until the following day. Talk about 1st world problems, right?
As for sports? The big events are on the big nets. And I’ve never really been one for golf, you know?
Bye bye, Satellite. You aren’t missed in the slightest.
One more thing:
Tivo’s latest update brought all the following apps together: Vudu, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Youtube. And, if you are interested in a show on one of those services, when you add your OnePass (the new Season Pass) you can include streams in your queue. They don’t take up space but you can get to that show immediately. I have no word on HBONow, however. I can’t imagine it won’t be far behind.

ADVENTURES IN CORD CUTTING #11: THE DEED IS DONE…ALMOST

ADVENTURES IN CORD CUTTING #11: THE DEED IS DONE…ALMOST

Twitt
Wow, this has taken a long time. I don’t think there’s ever been a bandage that has been removed so slowly and with such trepidation. I’m not sure why that is. I will chalk it up to addiction. Not just the suckling at the glass teat but the nectar of all I can drink from the source.
See, I can remember when cable was new. We didn’t have it. Chatham Township wasn’t wired for it at first. My cousins in Union, they had it. So, on weekends I would drive my parents’ van across Jersey to hang out with my cousin and her best friend and her best friend’s boyfriend (who are still together today!) and we would just watch MTV all night in the friend’s basement. The number of times I saw Marillion suggests I should remember at least ONE of their songs. I do not.
My family got cable when I was away at college. I came home to a strange box with a LOT of buttons and if you pushed three of them at the same time, you could get some semi-coherent image of what looked like it might be naked people. But that was unreliable at best. It wasn’t until I was living on my own, in a studio apartment up the street from Mann’s Chinese, that I decided to get cable for my apartment. It was a big occasion. I recall the cable guy showing up and giving me all that glorious access…on my 10″ little color box that I had found,  actually, on the streets of the lower west side, under an overpass near 10th ave. There was no on/off switch, so you had to pry it out with tweezers or use the back end of a pen, jammed on to the nub to pull it out. But it was mine.
And, lo and behold, cable. Of my own. Finally.  I’m one of those people who likes the tv on in the background. It’s like a window to the rest of the world. Let me know I’m not alone. But, those days are over now.  For this week we came to the end of that three month HBO promotion. We contacted DirecTV and we put our membership on suspension.
And.
Just to cement it in a little bit. I bought our first season pass to a television show. The Walking Dead. We will watch it on Amazon, starting next week. If all goes well, we will make the suspension permanent.

ADVENTURES IN CORD CUTTING PT. 10: WAIT. WE’RE NOT CUTTING THE CORD? WHAT?

ADVENTURES IN CORD CUTTING PT. 10: WAIT. WE’RE NOT CUTTING THE CORD? WHAT?

Twitt
The roles have been reversed. For the longest time it was Beth who was reluctant to pull the trigger and cut the damned cord completely. I got that but I was still the hung ho, rah rah, let’s join the 21st century already, cord cutting fanatic.
And then the day came to actually make the call to DirecTV. I was ready for it. Looking forward to it. I was gonna talk to retention and get them to just give me free HBO so i didn’t go away, Beth can have her True Blood final season and we can catch up on whatever HBO shows we missed and then, after that, cut the cord.
But, the damnedest thing happened. I got taken in by the retention department and my own desire to break (more than) even.
He was good, this Jeremy in retention.
Free HBO? Okay.No problem. 3 months.
How about some Showtime? Sure. Let’s watch that Masters of Sex show. Why not?
Anything else?
How about dropping your monthly from $82 to $45?
Um….come again?
It seems that, if we are okay with not having the God channel, some music channels, ESPN (s) and AMC, we can drop down to some bare bones that loses that big channel but still includes Comedy Central & FX (giving us our Drunk History, Amy Shumer, Louie) and only have to pay for the shows on AMC that we like on Amazon or iTunes or Vudu. So, Walking Dead. Mad Men. Better Call Saul. American Horror Story. We’ll pay for those. Okay. We had already figured that in to our new costs.
This is not cutting but not more expensive than what we already have. In fact, it’s about $9 cheaper each month. We could actually just dump Hulu now that we are keeping the Satellite.
The landscape, she is a changing. Fast. And Hard.

ADVENTURES IN CORD CUTTING – PART NINE – $32 A MONTH. [UPDATED TO $28 PER MONTH]

ADVENTURES IN CORD CUTTING – PART NINE – $32 A MONTH. [UPDATED TO $28 PER MONTH]

Twitt
So, where were we? Oh, yeah. We bit the bullet on the TiVo and decided to go for a lifetime subscription. (Whose lifetime? My lifetime? Your lifetime? — this was the standard issue line in the video store I worked at in New York 30 years ago. We offered a 5 year membership, back when you needed a membership, and, when customers asked why not a lifetime membership, we were instructed to ask that. We were basically taught to be dicks.) There was a small hitch. I was informed by TiVo when I got the first machine this year that we could change our subscription from monthly to lifetime at any time and not have to pay for the full year. This is in contrast to what is written on the website so I bitched and moaned about it. Also, that I couldn’t find anything on the site that offered a discount to previous customers. Tivo’s customer support has always been terrific and, after a couple minutes on hold, they waived the rest of the year and allowed me to just switch over, paying of course. But, not paying the full freight. I was also given the previous subscriber difference. Hey, it’s significant. $400 vs. $500. If the Tivo lasts 5 years that’s $6.67 a month vs $8.33. This is important as we look at the monthly savings of cord cutting. It’s that savings that will reflect in our purchases of shows we will no longer be able to watch live: Mad Men, The Americans, Orphan Black, The Walking Dead. In some cases, by the time we get to them, they will already be available on many of the devices we use. So, that’s a big deal. And a significant drop from the $13 we were paying for the ala cart TiVo Service. The fellow at TiVo also wanted to know about the OTA antennae we were using. He expected it to be Mohu or something.  It wasn’t. It’s this: Amazon Digital Antenna But, now Amazon has an even cheaper one: Amazon Digital Antenna Cheaperand I would try that before the more expensive one. We might run a MoCa line from the Tivo downstairs to the other tv but I have a feeling that we won’t want to. The streaming might just be enough. So, what’s stopping the full trigger pull? HBO. “Why not just use a friend’s subscription?” That’s a possibility, and we could pay them a monthly share cost, but the Roku box is really finicky. Sometimes it takes a LONG time to load and then needs to reload and then just freezes and it’s not reliable. Now, it’s fine for me to watch, say, Game of Thrones online, but Beth isn’t much of an online watcher. She prefers to curl up on the couch and enjoy herself. And I don’t blame her. So, it’s really just an True Blood waiting game. With the proration of the TiVo lifetime here’s where we stand:
Netflix – $9 a month (OR thereabouts. There’s going to be pay hikes for this and others down the line)
Amazon Prime – $99 a year or $8.25 $4 a month (in a Facebook conversation it was discussed and I agreed that it’s not fair to offload the entire cost of Amazon Prime to the video part. We use it to purchase items less than $35 far more often and now, with Amazon Music, some of the cost needs to be allocated there. So, I’ve cut the cost of Amazon in half. It should still probably be lower)
Hulu Plus – $8 a month (Necessary for Network/Comedy Central shows on the downstairs TV plus there’s stuff the kids like)
TiVo – $6.67 (down from $13 a month, based on 5 year projection.)
Total for more TV than we really can watch: $31.92 $28.32
$31.92 $28.32 a MONTH.
If we were just paying $100 for cable, we save $68 a month. Over $800 a year as projected in an earlier post. If we bought the most expensive shows, like Girls or Game of Thrones on Vudu or some other service at $40 a pop, we could still buy 20 shows and break even. But, we won’t because, seriously, who has that kind of time??? $32 $28 bucks a month. It’s a steal.