My favorite moment: entering my appearance in a personal injury case as “Attorney Michael H. Appelstein.” For the first time, it felt real.
A few notes before I close the door on this rough time for the Appelstein family. (It’ll remain rough for awhile, but at least the upswing begins now.)
* Two online articles this week: My Village Voice Pazz & Jop ballot, and a quickie RFT piece about hearing She & Him at the call center where I worked for a week and a half this month. I should note that although I’m flattered to be part of Pazz & Jop, it doesn’t negate my opinions about its ridiculousness – the whole Vampire Weekend class-based “controversy” being this year’s example. This authenticity debate has been going on at least since Joe Strummer was outed as a diplomat’s son, and I don’t see any resolution. Or point.
* Speaking of the RFT, intrepid editor Annie has tracked down some fascinating YouTube clips by The Remaindrz, a femme new-wave/power-pop St. Louis band circa 1982. The vibe is more Pretenders/Blondie than Slits/Raincoats, but that’s to be expected given the time period and the non-coastal location (although Chicago, Minneapolis and Austin all had cool post-punk girl bands at the time). No one seems to know who they are/were, and that includes a local mailing list composed mostly of people who saw every local show between 1978 and 1985. Who were they? I’m taking up this crusade as my own!
* I watched the Joy Division biopic on Pitchfork.tv this week. It was so much better than Control if you’re looking for a sense of the band and the post-industrial Manchester vibe that created it. Not only has it thrown me back into a Joy Division kick, but I wish I could take the Factory Records tour of Manchester.* As a side note, I’m now obsessed with the Northern Soul song “Keep On Keepin’ On” that Joy Division allegedly tried to cover, but ended up using as source material for “Interzone.” Anyone know where I can find a copy of that?
* Sort of. It would of course be incomplete, since the Hulme Crescents have been pulled down, the deserted Manchester rail station long since refurbished, and the Hacienda long gone. Question: Is wanting to visit Hulme like, say, being a Wu-Tang Clan fan and wanting to see the Stapleton housing projects? Full of theoretical mystique, but drab and kind of dangerous to actually do?
I still can’t believe I’m typing this, but after months of searching, I have finally been extended an offer to work for a law firm. I accepted, of course. It’s a very small firm that specializes in bankruptcy and immigration cases. Ironically, one of the things that set me apart from other candidates was this very blog and my web-savviness.
I start Monday. I’m incredibly relieved – not to mention stunned – but also nervous about performing up to expectations. Then again, the alternative may have been the crap call center job that it was my pleasure to leave on Tuesday. I’d rather be challenged and taken seriously than do call-center work.
Thanks so much to those of you who have emailed me privately with ideas and words of encouragement. It’s nice to know that I have such nice readers and friends.
Today’s Wall Street Journal features a list of the “best and worst jobs in the U.S.” 200 careers are listed. Check out the top 20. See number 18? “Paralegal specialist.” Now check the master list. Where is “attorney?” Down at number 82, behind “stenographer/court reporter” (28) and “federal judge” (69). At least it’s still in the top half of the listing, and is just narrowly “better” than such prestige jobs as “stockbroker,” “corporate executive,” “author,” “architect” and “dentist.”
Interestingly, “newspaper reporter” is down at #140. I studied journalism in college and fully expected to pursue this career. See? I could have it worse. (I know several fellow former journalists who switched to law – probably because the investigative skills are transferable, and because there’s never been any money in journalism.)
I’m not so sure about the bottom 20 jobs. Being an EMT wouldn’t be so bad – saving lives would be rewarding, would it not? Being an auto mechanic would seem to appeal to those who have a knack for fixing things and solving problems. I could even handle being a garbage collector if, say, I was a contractor; the money’s probably good. There definitely seems to be an anti-manual labor bias in this list.
Our youngest daughter Abby is currently obsessed with the number eight. Not a stuffed animal, cartoon or doll; a number.
I’m not sure exactly where or when her eightophilia started, but the first time I noticed it is when she and her sister were playing with their indoor hopscotch set. The set includes numbered foam blocks from one to eight. Abby took the eight and began carrying it around with her everywhere. She even brought it to bed, literally tucking it in and cuddling it at night.
Once I noticed this, I did what any parent with latent alternadad tendencies would do: searched my CD library for relevant listening. I came up with the Beatles’ “Eight Days A Week” and “All Together Now” and Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88.” Abby loved “Rocket 88.” For awhile, it was all she wanted to hear. Then I found the Schoolhouse Rock “Figure Eight” cartoon on YouTube, and she’d sit there mesmerized, demanding to see it again and again. (Later Callie remembered that we had the Schoolhouse Rock DVD set; it’s gone over a treat with both daughters.)
Schoolhouse Rock sealed the deal. Abby officially had (and has) Eight Fever. When we park in an echoey parking garage, she’ll yell, “I LIKE EIGHT! AND ESTHER LIKES FOUR!” (Abby’s logic: since Esther is four years old, four must be her favorite number. Esther is actually fairly indifferent to numbers.) When we pass the local ice-skating rink, she asks if we can visit so she can make her own figure eight. Her favorite article of clothing is the custom-made “8″ t-shirt that Callie made for her birthday. The girl simply can’t get enough of the number eight.
It’s been cute, but I can’t help but wonder: why a number, and why that number? As it happens, Hanukkah just ended last week – and since there are eight days of the Hanukkah and Passover holidays, I began to wonder whether Judaism had anything to say about the number eight. So I hit the Web to get the perspective of Chabad, which often deals with numerology in a Torah context. It turns out that Judaism has a lot to say about eight.*
According to a kabbalistic interpretation of the Torah, the number seven symbolizes perfection. Seven musical notes; seven colors of the rainbow; seven days that God took to create the earth, according to Genesis (including Shabbos). Seven weeks between Passover and Shavout to work on improving seven essential emotions (possibly the “seven deadly sins?”).
Eight, on the other hand, symbolizes something beyond nature and therefore unknowable. Think of the Hanukkah story’s central drama: the Macabees only had enough oil for one day’s worth of light, but “a great miracle happened there” and it lasted for…eight days. Think of the Passover story, where the plagues mysteriously bypassed the Israelites’ homes; we celebrate eight days of Passover as well. A young boy receives his bris on the eighth day of his birth – one day after the seven days of “creation.”
This all relates directly to the Jewish concept of God – as something all-encompassing and all-powerful, yet impossible to conceptualize. Any rabbi worth his tzitzit will tell you that God’s ways are mysterious and unknowable. Even Moses didn’t get to see the face of the God that was putting him through 40 years of frustration and aimless wandering.
What would a Chabadnik or a serious Kabbalah scholar (not that Hollywood/Madonna nonsense) have to say about Abby’s sudden obsession with the number eight? They might very well say that it’s proof that it’s Abby’s pintele yid coming out on its own. Maybe she merely likes the perfect symmetry of the numeral. Most likely it’s a totally random thing. It’s interesting to consider the spiritual implications, though, isn’t it?
* I don’t know whether the other Abrahamic faiths have similar associations with the number eight. Then again, the Wu-Tang Clan named their last CD 8 Diagrams, and most of them are members of the Nation of Islam, so there must be a parallel tradition somewhere…
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