Buffy's First Puppy Class

Buffy is a smart dog. She’s observant, a great problem solver and has an uncanny ability to sense how people feel about dogs. She knows instantly if someone who walks by likes dogs and is interested in interacting with her. Her potty training is going fantastic. At three months of age she has a strong aversion to going in her crate or her pen and does a great job of letting Diana and I know when she wants to go.



She knows her name pretty well. Even though she often gets distracted, Buffy can go on a half an hour walk and heel without too much difficulty. She knows how to fetch (doesn’t really get the part that she needs to let go of whatever she fetches), sit, down, dance (jump up), roll over (well, this one is a work in progress), paw and is pretty good at speak. Considering that in dogs year Buffy is only three years old, she’s doing quite well.



When we enrolled Buffy into puppy class my wife and I joked that she would be at the top of her class. Diana and I both went to Northwestern University so of course our dog would excel in her class. After our first puppy, Buffy wasn’t at the head of the class and I was a little disappointed.

Was Buffy’s performance in class really all that bad? Not really, she was nervous being in a new place which is normal for Buffy. Once other dogs were in the room though, she calmed down and did a fantastic job socializing with the other dogs. She gave us a solid 40 minutes of great focus but for the last 20 minutes she was pretty much done. She was distracted by the adjacent room and was just getting tired. As I saw the other dogs doing the heeling exercise that Buffy just wasn’t interested in doing, I caught myself getting frustrated with her.

The thing is that I want Buffy to succeed and for some reasons I felt that it was important that she be able to show off to the other dogs. The thing is that Buffy doesn’t really care. All she wants to do is play with the other dogs and most of all please Diana and I. Is it really fair to compare Buffy to other dogs? No, they are all different breeds, different ages with different owners.

Being in a class setting I revert back to this need to be the best and succeed at a high level and it’s easy to forget that success has nothing to do with being better than others and getting a high grade. Success is about how we feel about ourselves and the progress we make as learners. If Buffy only learns one thing in each class out of the numerous exercises, that can be success for her. It really isn't fair to project my own feelings of academic success on my puppy.

Puppy training class is more about training the owners to train the dogs and there is an immediacy and importance that Diana and I master these training techniques in this short course. Really, Buffy simply isn’t going to master everything that is introduced in class during the course of the class and that’s ok. We have plenty of time to train Buffy.

My feelings of disappointments have dissolved into feelings of pride after my wife reminded me how amazing Buffy performed even if there was twenty minutes in class she wasn’t focused. The whole getting frustrated thing, well, that happened again a couple days later.

One afternoon, I was trying to lure Buffy out from under our coffee table and I was loosing my patience.

When I finally got her out from under the table and had her in my arms, she looked up at me, licked my cheek as if to ask me what was wrong. Instead of putting her in her crate as I had planned, I laid down on the couch with Buffy next to me and to my surprise after not wanting to come to me from under the coffee table she crawled up on my chest curled up into a a ball of fluff and went to sleep.

Buffy knew exactly what to do to remind me that even though we didn’t always understand each other, the bottom line is that I make her feel loved and at home. The amazing thing is that Buffy makes me feel the exactly same way. In that moment my frustration melted into contentment and as I exhaled, I thanked Buffy for being part of my life.

I told you my dog was smart.

I Do Not Hook Up by Kelly Clarkson/Katy Perry

I’m not really sure what people mean by “hook up.” From my experience, a “hook up” can be anything from meeting a friend for lunch to a one-night stand. Whenever my friends use the term “hook up” it is usually followed by clarification questions, as this term has become a catchall rather then a description of a specific activity. So you can imagine my surprise when I found out that Kelly Clarkson recorded a song called “I Do Not Hook Up.”

After enthusiastically getting Kelly Clarkson’s last album and listening to “My Life Would Suck Without You" (which I covered in this earlier post) for about an hour, I decided to delve into the rest of the album. Looking at the track list, I saw the name of the second song on the CD, “I Do Not Hook Up.”

Are you serious? “My Life Would Suck Without You” was an awkward name for a song but the spirit of this line is cute and this sentences was effectively used in the song. Now a song about not “hooking up,” refusing to get together with someone physically or otherwise? “I Do Not Hook Up” sounds more like the title to a song advocating celibacy to pre-teens than a mainstream pop song. It all made sense when I found out that this song was originally written and recorded by the queen of quirky, cute and tongue in cheek statements of feminism, Katy Perry.

In 2005 Katy Perry completed recorded solo debut (A) Katy Perry. Her record company planned to release this album later that year but was later canceled and never released because they could not figure out how to promote Perry. It wasn’t until One of the Boys released in 2008 that she released her first album. Katy Perry wrote and performed “Hook Up” which Clarkson recorded as “I Do Not Hook Up.”



The two recordings are more similar than they are different. Katy Perry’s sassy vocals lack the vocal strength of Kelly Clarkson, but they have just as much personality and attitude. The difference can be heard in the nuances that Perry adds in the verses and the high note at the end of bridge that Clarkson sails up to that Perry doesn’t attempt.

The statement of “I don’t hook up” in the mind of Katy is not a defensive explanation to the advances of a boy but a powerful declaration of self-confidence and self-respect. The lyrics start with asking the guy to stop drinking because he has “too much talent.” She asks him to “give up the game and get into me” focusing more on her as a person than the "thrill of the chase." The second verse has a cute line stating that “I can’t cook, no but I can clean up the mess you left” playing on the expectation of the woman’s gender roles denying the stereotype of woman being the ones who should be able to cook while embracing woman’s instinct to nurture.

The biggest difference in the lyrics is the chorus. Clarkson sings “I do not hook up, I go slow, so if you want me I don’t come cheap, keep your head on my hand and your heart of your sleeve.” While Clarkson’s line “keep your head on my hand” implied focusing on her a person, Perry’s original line “keep your thing in your pants” is far more humorous and to the point.

“I Do Not Hook Up” is not going to change anyone’s ideas about sexuality and hooking up, but it’s nice change of pace to have a song about the power of a woman to heal a man by helping him focus on the emotional part of the relationship.

One of the things I love about my wife Diana is that from the first day I met her she has had a clear idea about the way that she deserves to be treated and she has never been afraid to express this to me. It has made being her boyfriend, fiance and husband much easier than I ever imagined because I know she feels about herself and that she will let me know if I'm not off-base in my actions.

Sometimes we are afraid to make statements about who we are in fear that it will turn people away and the truth is that sometimes stating our beliefs about ourselves do scare people. But the people who turn away from true expressions of who you are never would have liked you anyways and the people who are attracted to that strength are worth sharing with the world the honesty in our hearts, even if that declaration is "I do not hook up!"

Stacy’s Mom by Fountains of Wayne

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“I'm seventeen. Looking at linoleum makes me wanna have sex.”
Xander from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 2: "Innocence"

Welcome to the mind of a teenage boy. It is a scary place to be.

While Xander’s comment is a little sarcastic, it has a grain of truth in it. Hormones often drive teenage boys beyond reason and logic. It’s not even about sexuality rather it’s about the idea and fantasy of sex, which is exactly what “Stacy’s Mom” is really about.

Even though there is little in my mind that is more disgusting and insidious than statutory rape regardless of the gender of the people involved, the idea of a boy having a crush on someone’s mom is funny. It’s such preposterous idea that we can’t help but laugh at it. At the same time we giggle at the ridiculousness of the idea of a boy being “in love” with someone’s mom, some people can relate to this idea. Not so much of the idea of having a crush on someone’s mom but having a unrealistic crush whether it be on a teen idol, model or actress.

Most of Fountains of Wayne’s music reflects the drudgery and depression of blue color America. Songs like “Hackensack” are melon collie reflections the failure of the middle class subruban dream.



While Fountains of Wayne’s other songs contemplates the reality of life, “Stacy’s Mom” reflects on a fantasy. The protagonist explains to his girlfriend that he’s more into Stacy’s mom then he is into Stacy. This premise has the potential for a Graduate style catastrophe but instead the ideas stay in the realm of fantasies.

Our narrator describes Stacy’s mom as “got it going on.” Who really uses that phrase anymore? It’s like this boy heard this line in a movie and is trying to awkwardly describe to his friends the prowess of Stacy’s mom. This boy’s hormones have clearly distorted his sense of reality as he interprets her criticizing his lawn mowing technique as a sign that she likes him.

Even though we know how realize how stupid this kid is acting, we celebrate along with his fantasy because deep down we all know what it’s like to excited about a dream. Sometimes living in a fantasy, even an idiotic one is makes us feel better about life.

“Stacy’s Mom” will always have a special place in my heart, not because I have memories of being infatuated with someone’s mom. I can say emphatically that that has never happened.

During graduate school at Northwestern University, my main job assignment as a graduate student was to direct the Northwestern University Basketball Band (NUBB). I conducted the band at every single men’s and women’s basketball games (the band was split up into two groups).

Conducting this group was an incredible learning experience as a musician and a one of the funniest jobs I’ve ever had. I had a blast getting to know people in the job Conducting is always fun and when it’s popular music arranged for pep band, it’s a unique joy that is indescribable.

One of my favorite songs to conduct was “Stacy’s Mom.” The verses build beautifully into the chorus and because of its popularity it was a song the cheerleaders made a dance to it and the crowd had a great time singing along with.

The last game I conducted was a packed men's game. We invited marching band alumni to perform along with the band. This was one of the most stressful games I conducting because the large crowds made it hard to heard officials calls (which is how I knew when to start the band) and it was a musical and administrative challenge to manage the alumni.

The last song we played before the end of the game was "Stacy's Mom." The combination of relief that I had made it through game and the sheer musical joy of the song made a truly unforgettable musical experiences.

I gotta say, for that two an a half minutes it really felt like I had it going on.

Ode To My Family by The Cranberries

Diana, Buffy and I are a family. We are a small family, fairly new and one of us is a little fluffy, but we are a family. We aren’t held together by blood but by what’s in our hearts. If this was all the family I had in my life, I would count myself as being blessed, but luckily for my family is much more than the three of us.

When I was child, family was my mom, dad and brother. Living together, growing up together, these three people were my world. No matter what life seemed to throw at me, they were there for me. I never imagined there would be anything else in my life that would come close to that.

Now that I’m older my family includes my immediate family, Diana’s family, and both of our extended families. Do all of these people hold the same meaning in my life as my extended family? Of course not, but they do share that feeling, comfort and warmth that can only come being a family. It’s feeling that the Cranberries describe as, “my mother, she held me, when I was out there.”

I first listened to “Ode To My Family,” after buying the Cranberries’ album No Need To Argue because I found out was the favorite band of a girl I had a crush on in high school. Did buying this album get anywhere with this girl? That would have necessitated me actually making a effort to talk to her. But this crush did bring me into the musical world of The Cranberries.

“Ode To My Family” is a reflective song that questions, “does anyone care?” while finding peace in the thoughts of family and growing up. Dolores O’Riordan’s thick Irish accent crackles with emotion as she works through feelings of frustration “you did not find me” and inner joy “unhappiness where’s when I was young.” Her voice through her careful whisper in the beginning of the songs to her pleading moans may be unfamiliar in their sound but are instantly relatable in their emotion.

It isn’t clear who Dolores is asking questions to in this song. Maybe a boyfriend who broke up with her, “But I miss you, ‘cause I liked it, when I was out there. Do you know this? Do you know you did not find me?” Maybe it’s just a reflection of feeling misunderstood by the world. Regardless there is a sense of feeling alone and desperate and after each one of these series of questions, like the warm summer breeze, the chorus reflects on what it was like to be young and part of a family. Her mother held her and her father liked her. Even though these things seem simple through the perspective of a child, being held and feeling like means the world.

When things would get tough in my world I used to find comfort in the memories of being home with my mother, father and brother. Even though there will always be a special place in my heart for my immediate family, I now find that same solace in many place: a house in Indiana with Diana’s extended family, playing scrabble with my in-laws and brother in-laws and cooking with my wife, while Buffy fights her reflection in the dishwasher.

The Joy Of Cooking Vegan?!?

Menu

Starters
Edamame Hummus with Toasted Nan Bread
Seared Tofu & Shitake Mushroom “sandwiches” with a Teriyaki Sauce & Black Bean Glaze

Entrees
Roasted Tomato and Bell Pepper soup with Filoni bread topped with roasted pine nut and garlic “butter”

We had one of Diana’s cousins and her husband over for dinner the other night. They are both vegan. These means that they do not eat any kind of meat but they also don't eat any dairy products including milk, cheese and butter.

When Diana asked last week, if we could have them over for dinner it seemed like a great opportunity to catch up with them and take on the challenge of cooking a vegan meal. I didn’t think about it a couple days and then I started trying to conceptualize what we could make for them.

Let’s, what kind of meat-less dishes do I make. Stir-fry vegetables, well no, I use chicken broth for that. I could do a curry, well there’s the broth again as well as that dollop of sour cream at the end that really pulls everything together. Salads, I could make a salad with lettuce and napa cabbage, with some garbanzo beans, topped with bacon and uh. . . hard boiled egg. Pasta, that’s easy, just roast some red pepper flacks, add some garlic and shallots, then toss in some nice penne and top with um. . . cheese. Well, I can do a tomato soup, without the milk which will go great with some garlic bread, that I CAN'T MAKE because it uses butter . . . SIGH.

Ok so I’m hitting a lot of road blocks.

I like to think of myself as an opened minded cook. Growing up at home cooking with my mom in the kitchen I learned how to cook mostly Asian orientated dishes, which is why it wasn’t until last month that I cooked a burger for the first time ever (it was great, we mixed in some shitake mushrooms and sweet onions). I can’t think of anything that I cook that is vegan, even when I’m eating celery sticks I dip them in Ranch dressing. So why am I bothering try to hard to figure out a vegan dinner? Well, like many things in my life, it goes back to my parents.

My sister-in-law is vegetarian and she has some vegan friends and when my mom has cooked for them and they have said that it’s the best vegan food they have ever eaten. I’m not competitive with my mom. I don’t have any no need to outdo her but whenever I’ve faced challenges in my life one of the things that keeps me going to knowing that my parents has faced similar ones and come out successful. When I was lonely in college my freshmen year across the country from friends and family I think of how my mom and dad came to America from Taiwan. If they could get through moving to a different country than I could survive college, and if my mom can cook vegan, well so can I.

After talking to my mom, wife and sister-in-law and doing some research I came up with a menu. The idea for the starters I got from my mom. The edamame hummus, is just ground edamame beans, some vegetable stock and instead of Tahini (ground sesame seed pasted used in hummus) I used sesame seed oil. The tofu dish is an argument that tofu can be full of flavor and have a pleasing texture. I stir-fried some chopped shitake mushroms with some olive oil, and finished it with some soy sauce. I put that aside while I made 2 inch by 1 inch squares out of tofu and got the moisture out of the tofu by pressing the pieces between two plates (this helps the tofu brown easier).

With two pieces of tofu like sandwich bread and the shitake as the filling, I seared one side of the of the sandwich in a pan with some canola oil until the tofu had a nice crispy crust, flipped the sandwich over, basted the top of it with a mixture of Teriyaki Sauce, black bean and garlic paste and hot sauce and stuck the pan in the oven to finish.

Roasted tomato soup is a recipe Diana got online. Basically instead of cooking tomatoes in the pot to reduce to get flavor, you roughly chop tomatoes and a bell better, top with olive oil and let the vegetables roast in the oven. While you do this, cook down some onions, sun-dried tomatoes and garlic in a pot. After about 40 minutes of roasting and the onions have caramelized, throw everything in a blender and you got soup.

The Filoni bread topped with pine nuts and roasted garlic “butter” was not so successful. I wanted to do make something like garlic bread so I roasted some pine nuts ground them and mixed them with olive oil and garlic and then put it on bread and toasted it. It tasted kind of like pesto but looked kind of baby spit-up.

Even with the Filoni bread, the meal was a success and our vegan guest really enjoyed the meal. I put a lot of time into making this meal. I went to three different grocery stores (one twice because I forgot my wallet the first time) and probably spent about 3 or 4 hours cooking. Diana didn’t ask me to and in no ways did Diana’s cousin and her husband make me feel obligated to make that kind of effort. This was all my choice.

Sharing a meal with friends and family is an intimate and powerful experience. It feels amazing when you are the one that provides the food that is central to the experience that can make any ordinary night, special.

So mom, I did it. It was one of the more challenging meals I’ve put together and it turned our great. I know that I don’t need to prove that I’m you son, but it’s always nice when the little successes in life confirm that fact.

Up, Up And Away by The Men In Black

Here's a recording of the fateful performance that I discussed in the previous post (there is no video, just audio). The prelude to "Up, Up And Away" is a song "Behold Man" a song we sang my freshmen year in choir, which we didn't exactly love (ok, we hated it). Join me and experience the conceptual shift from the audacity of art music to THE FIFTH DIMENSION.

Up, Up And Away by The Fifth Dimension

Stories about those moments in college that you will never forget seem to be part of college experience for almost everybody. These are the moments outside of class doing things that can only be understood with “college logic” that define not only the college experience but who we are as people.

That may be laying it on a bit thick, because if that’s the case than The Fifth Dimension, an adult contemporary group from the late 1960s helped defined who I am. Now that’s a scary thought.

On December 2nd, of my Junior year in college a group of my fraternity brother and I performed “Up, Up And Away” by the Fifth Dimension (complete with choreography) in front of a full audience in Lutkin Hall at Northwestern University.

During college, I was a member of the Iota Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, a music themed fraternity. We did similar activities to other fraternities but we also had a men’s choir, various other musical ensembles and put on recitals once a quarter. Many of us were good friends with the Beta Chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota (my wife was a member), which was a music fraternity for woman. They had a choir as well and other musical groups. Socially and professionally, the two organizations supported each other, going to each other’s events and having joint recitals and other events.

So when we found an men's choir arrangement of “Up, Up And Away” in a library sale, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do a parody of Sigma Alpha Iota’s a capella group, Ladies In Red. In that moment the group Men In Black was born.

Where Ladies In Red, worked hard to do legitimate a capella arrangements of current pop songs, we were working off a four part arrangement of a song that perfectly combined the watered down musicality of adult contemporary music with the bland non-offensive sound of easy listening. “Up, Up And Away” was an enormously popular song which won four Grammy’s including record and song of the year. This song clearly deserved it winning over other songs that came out in 1967 like “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison, “Respect” by Aretha Franklin, “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix and “Ruby Tuesday” by the Rolling Stones. Oh, Grammy's does your irrelevance ever fail to surprise us?

We enlisted the help of a couple more fraternity brothers and began rehearsing. This was not the easiest song to sing. Between the four key changes and thick harmonies there was quite a bit of work to do. Even though, as one of my friends put it, “the Eagles were more black than the Fifth Dimension,” they sang with a beautiful blend of and great harmonies.

Now you remember that I mentioned that the audience was full when were performed “Up, Up And Away?” That wasn’t the norm for our recitals. Usually the audience of Phi Mu Alpha recitals was primarily made up from woman from Sigma Alpha Iota. We were trying to figure out ways to get a bigger audience so we made a deal with the Northwestern School Of Music. We would promote their series of chamber music concerts and have two of the School Of Music chamber groups perform in our recital and the School Of Music would list us as part of their chamber music series.

Back then, there was a requirement that School Of Music, that all students had to go to certain number of performances as part of their grade. Towards the end of the quarter students would realize that they haven’t been to enough concerts and this joint venture between the School Of Music and Phi Mu Alpha was one of the last music concerts of that quarter.

It would have been one thing if we performed “Up, Up And Away” in front of friends but the fact that we did it in front of music majors was something different altogether. We performed right after a Beethoven string quartet and I remember right before starting the song, looking out at this audience thinking what a horrible idea this was, but once we started it was a blast and believe it or not the audience loved it.

Men In Black performed a couple more times, but nothing matched the magic of our first performance. There was something so spur of the moment and exciting about doing something fun for no other reasons but to be silly. Music can do a lot of things and “Up, Up And Away” helped me take myself less seriously as a “Music Major” and realize that sometimes the music itself isn’t the most important thing but it is the experience that you share with friends that is most meaningful.

On second thought, I think I would be up for performing this "Up, Up And Away" again, but only with the Men In Black.