NEWPORT OR BUST (2k10)

a'right, kids! jess and i are awaiting the arrival of mr. ryan and then the lot of us are all roadtripping it down to the happiest place on earth (aka newport, rhode island) for the 51st annual Newport Folk Festival.

i am excited for the following reasons:

1) i am officially interviewing my favorite band of all time.

2) i am going to dance like a crazy person to the sounds of my newest favorite band (dawes) and another tried and true favorite that i'm so stoked to see again (sharon jones and the dap kings).

3) i am going to somehow find a bonfire dance party tomorrow night. this will happen.

4) quality time with partner-in-crime jess hodge and cristina (who will be working the festival on behalf of honest tea! yeeeeah!)

5) peach cream cheese muffins; fried clams.

6) REALLY GOOD MUSIC, YOU GUYS.

i'll be blogging the big show all weekend at WeeklyDig.com and Jess' photos will be up there too, so bookmark it and come along with us for the ride, kids.

see you monday.

X H

dream interpretation, anyone?

image: greenweddingshoes. (this website makes me want to get married. it doesn't necessarily make me want to BE married - it just makes me want to have a beautiful, ridiculous wedding.)

okay. so, this morning, i woke up thoroughly confused/freaked out. see, i rarely dream, and when i do it's usually in black and white, and last night i had a DOOZY. granted, am i overwhelmed a bit at the moment and falling behind on the current piece i'm writing for the dig and trying to pack for newport and therefore stressed? sure. but hey, i'm always stressed by normal people standards, so this shouldn't be affecting my REM cycle, right?

anyways. the dream:

don't remember when the dream kicked off, exactly, but we were in a huge, fancy hotel in what i assume was boston and i was getting married to one of my good guy friends, let's call him bob. (bob and i have no romantic history and i've never had so much as a crush on him - no offense to bob as he's wonderful - but we don't really hang out as much as we used to, so this is also weird. also, i guarantee you that my subconscious doesn't want us to fall in love or anything.) so in the dream, i spend the morning getting ready for this wedding in this huge embarrassingly fancy looking hotel with my mother and the other women in my family. these women, in real life, don't necessarily get along and have a history as such, but they're all working together to get me pretty for the wedding. don't recall much about the dress, besides it's strapless, big, and my veil is huuuuuge.

bob comes in while i'm getting ready and i get upset (the whole "you're not supposed to see the bride before the wedding!" shabang), and then the next thing i know it's wedding time and bob is up front with all his groomsmen (including my brother) and then i get up there and notice that my bridesmaids are only my stepsister and alanna (my cousin) and then i freak out when i realize that my friends are missing. where's marcy and maya and jen and karen and everybody else? and, most importantly, where's los? (common knowledge: los is my best friend and has been since we were kids. obviously, should i ever get married, she'd be my maid of honor.) i get pushed through the wedding, bob looks all excited, and we go to exchange rings and i don't have one, only he does - i just have my engagement ring (which was huge in the dream) and i give him his wedding band. when i ask where mine is, he just says, "oh, you forgot to get it ahead of time, remember?" .... weird?

anyways, reception happens and i'm upset because my friends aren't around and i ask my mom about it and she tells me flat outright that my friends aren't coming and that they weren't invited. this shocks me for multiple reasons. it'd be one thing if my mom didn't like my friends/los, but that's ridiculous - she loves los and she loves my friends - and i get upset and my mom gets visibly angry and walks away. i can't find bob anywhere, and then i woke up.

so,

a) WTF

and b) HALP. what does this mean. someone point me in the direction of a dream interpretation website or something because i don't get it. i'm 100% sure i don't want to get married right now so that can't be it, and i know that this isn't a YOU AND BOB SHOULD BE TOGETHER! dream because that's just absurd. this is just bonkers. anyways, glad i got it off my chest because now i have to go transcribe an hour of tape and whip up a good feature for the next issue of the dig. ah, life.

X H

"do you want me to come over?" the answer is always yes.

this lady has the right idea. bed, paris, gazillion thread count sheets, bliss.

(photo courtesy of one of my favorite blogs on the planet, so much to tell you. (hey, girls - if you want a pen pal in boston you got one!))

has your body ever just given up on you? lately, i feel like it's absolutely the hardest thing in the entire world to just get out of bed. i just want to sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep. maybe it's the heat, and maybe i'm not getting enough nutrients, and maybe i'm not working out as much as i should be, but whatever it is i'm just tiiiiired, man. the past couple of days have just been about tea and naps and getting work done on upcoming Dig features, so maybe i just needed a little down time in order to recharge my batteries and get centered.

on a high note: THE NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL IS THIS WEEKEND! old school favorite/photographer extraordinaire jess hodge and i will be heading down to newport friday morning for three days of beach, spooning with my aunt's puppies and music music music music. i'm excited for folk festival #51 for the following reasons:

+ saying hey to the festival/fort adams staff. they're all awesome and in such a good mood.

+ seeing edward sharpe and the magnetic zeroes, dawes, the low anthem, the david wax museum, sharon jones and the dap kings and, obviously, the Avett Brothers (duhz all around) right on the waterfront. absolute heaven.

+eating my weight in peach cream cheese muffins from the ocean breeze cafe. these muffins are magical. i kid you not. they are the most delicious breakfast pastries known to man.

+quality time with some favorite people. i'm thrilled that jess and i will be teaming up on this one, but i'm also stoked that ryan, sean, schluter, cristina and a few other friends will be either covering/working/attending newport this year. shenanigans on thames st should be plentiful indeed.

in other news, i've been listening to that black keys album and florence + the machine like crazy. i don't even care that that godawful lookin' eat pray love trailer yoinked the single from flo's debut, that album is glorious. and hey, it's been making me feel better lately. that's something!

back to new york? back to madrid? back to changes.

(oh, ps, spain totally won the world cup. called it from the beginning. just sayin'.)

serious chat time, guys!

so as many of you know, i was laid off just before memorial day. this also happened about a month into my new lease in an apartment where nothing, and i mean nothing, had gone right since we moved in. (my roommate continues to be awesome. she's pretty much the only good thing about this place.) the long and short of it is this: for the first time since moving back to boston in june of '08, i'm ready to get going again.

i'm applying for jobs in boston like crazy still and i'm absolutely loving where i'm at on the music/lifestyle writing front here in town, so staying put isn't entirely out of the question. i would be lying, however, if i said that i wasn't seriously considering the following plans of action:

1) Move to Madrid, try to score an internship at El País and teach English on the side to pay rent (or try to). i'm one of those weirdos who actually prefers madrid to barcelona - everyone goes gaga for parc guell and las ramblas and the ocean and all that, and don't get me wrong, it's a fucking spectacular city (which i absolutely plan on visiting once my brother moves there in january for his semester abroad), but madrid and i just click. we get along famously and i could see myself living there in 2.5 seconds. with that said, the unemployment rate in spain is something absurd like 21% right now, it's the most expensive spot in the country to live in and i wouldn't necessarily be able to make rent just teaching english. as far as the internship/international journalism thing goes, it's always, always something i've wanted to do and i always said that if i were to get my masters in journalism i'd want to get it in london or madrid and i want to see if i can hack it on the bilingual front as a writer. huge leap of faith (and a costly one), but the payoffs? yeah, the payoffs could be pretty epic.

2) Head back to Granada and open up my restaurant with Andy. andy was one of my first friends in spain, and he's been dating one of my dearest friends for nearly four years now. i worked at andy's tapas bar in granada while i was studying there, and i had a pretty decent idea to open a particular kind of spot in the university town. andy's all about it, too, and can feasibly go in on a restaurant with me. we've only begun talks about it, but this is one of those "this would be a scary, terrifying, expensive and potentially life-changing experience in all the good kind of ways" kind of deals. i could run a restaurant in spain and live there for a year to get it off the ground. could i sink thousands of dollars into it and lose it all? sure. but yeah, currently i'm weighing the pros and cons of doing just that. i figure if there's any point in my life to gamble like this, it should be now. (oh, something to consider: this move would absolutely unequivocally piss off my family more than you could possibly imagine. i don't know if they'd calm down from it. they'd view this as pretty irresponsible, so that's weighing in pretty heavily here.)

3) Return to New York. i'm going to be 25 in january and i've always said that i want to be out of boston and either back in new york, madrid or buenos aires by 26. why not get a head start on it, if i feel like i'm hitting a rut in boston now? oh, the whole "hey let me move to a city full of people who work just as hard if not harder than i do who are smarter than i am and better at what i do than i am" thing? yeeeeah. starting over is tricky no matter how you slice it, but it would prove for a good challenge and i think i'd be able to run with the big dogs eventually. i hope, anyway. [gulp]. also - huge pro - I ALREADY HAVE A LIFE IN NEW YORK. i basically just picked up and left when i graduated, and all of my favorite people, places and things in the city are still very much so there. it's alarming to think how easily i could just fall back into old habits, but there's also comfort in that. moving there seems like the least traumatic/least costly of the options yet.

4) Look for gigs/apartments in Chicago when I'm there this week. i love chi-town, man. i'm going out there for a week to hang out with amy, help her pack up her gold coast apartment, and check out some shows while i'm in town. i get to meet nico's beautiful girlfriend (!) and frequent favorite haunts, and i get to go running along the coast of lake michigan every morning. that's swell. hopefully this trip will offer some perspective, and if anything it gives me a chance to head out of the city for a second and recharge my batteries.

phew. anyways. i feel better. thanks for listening. (or reading.) if you've got insight, dispense it, please.

X H