I saw Dan Bern at the Highline Ballroom

Never Done: Was present for the first time Kathleen met Phil
Never Done: Went to the Highline Ballroom

Technically if I am there when someone else does something they have never done, it is also something I have never done, but I admit it's something of a stretch. But since I'm just a wee bit invested in all things Kathleen and Dana, I am going to count this one. Kathleen and Dana and Josh and I all met Dana's dad Phil for tea and coffee at the Tea Lounge. Three quarters of the times I have met Phil have been at the Tea Lounge (and the fourth was at a barbecue at Lois's house in Canarsie) so that wasn't new. It has always delighted me how Dana and Phil share a coffee on their dates, and since Dana gave up drinking coffee 10 weeks ago, they each got their own drinks, so that was new to me. But more importantly, it was the first time one of them met the other one's Important Biological Family Member. And I got to be there. It was actually really wonderful. I got to watch as Dana's dad slowly shifted his focus from the people he knew better over to Kathleen, and I could see Kathleen, by being her warm, and engaging self, helped the shift happen, and I could see how much Phil liked her. It was actually an amazing process to be present for.

Phil was telling us some stories about the neighborhood he grew up in, and he mentioned this smart kid named Joe Flom, who went to Townsend Harris High School (which is where my dad went, which fed directly into City College, which is the only reason he got a college education and became the scientist he became) and then (we are back to Joe) to Harvard Law. He went on to tell lots of old friends success stories, and at some point, Kathleen mentioned the book Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, which is about the fact that individual successful people tend to have gotten a particular kind of institutional support at a young age that helped them become successful. And then she started to wonder if Joe Flom had in fact been in Outliers. She looked him up on her Blackberry, and then I happened to have my iPad, on which I had read Outliers, and so I looked up Joe Flom in Outliers, and .... yes! An entire chapter! From which I read a few paragraphs. Really, how could Phil not love Kathleen???

From there, Josh and I left for a show I have been excited about since three months ago, when I bought tickets to see Dan Bern perform at the Highline Ballroom. This was a perfect Never Done/Tshuve event. I have seen Dan perform many times, although it's been years, but I have never been to the Highline. We got there early to get a good table (they often cover the dance floor with tables) but by the time we got there, there was already a line down the block. We fell in line, but I soon spotted Betsy, who I had just met for the first time earlier in the week, and went up to talk with her. Before long, she invited us to stand with her, and we agreed to share a table with her and her college roommate if it made more sense than getting two.

In the end, we shared more than a table. We shared coconut shrimp, and Scrabble, and stories. But most of all, we shared a love of Dan Bern's music, and it was very sweet to get to know them in this context. Now, I'd never heard Dan play with a band before, and I was skeptical. I wanted to hear Dan, not some band. But as it turned out, Common Rotation was fantastic: laid back instrumentals, melodic, and well-mixed. They weren't as interesting lyrically as Dan is (and careened precariously close to misogyny on one song) but once Dan came out on stage and Common Rotation backed him on his songs, it made for a perfect musical meld.

I am tempted to tell you his entire set list, but maybe all I need to do is tell you that I am tempted to do that, and that will tell you everything you really need to know about how I feel about Dan Bern. He's one of those song writers who writes songs that relate to our lives. If you're Jewish, or you love baseball, or have a sister (and love baseball) or you think about world politics and narrative storytelling, he writes songs for that will make you think more broadly and also feel more deeply, which is the whole point of art, right?

No one is watching you

Never Done: Spin Class
Never Done: Paul Weller Live

My friend Rimma has been selling me on the virtues of spin class for months now, and I have been resisting her -- and spinning's -- charms for as many months. First, I lived too far from the gym. Then, I didn't think I was in good enough shape to jump into a group class without flaring up one of my multitudes of chronic injuries. Also, most of the classes are at 7 AM, and my multitude of chronic injuries prevents me from going to spin class at 7 AM. One by one, the impediments were removed. I moved a couple blocks away from the gym, and started a slow, steady workout routine to start building my muscles and stamina back up. Just the other day, I noticed that I was able to increase all my weights by 5 pounds, and still feel no strain as I lift, and also that running a mile on the track without stopping has become pretty easy. So I texted Rimma and told her I was ready for the 9:30 AM weekend class. She texted back and told me she was bringing a posse.

When the time came, I didn't want to go. My neck was tight, I had a ton of work to do, it was beautiful out. But when Rimma texted me to say she had gotten there early and set up a bike for me, I hustled over to the gym, stretched, climbed on the bike, said a silent Shehekhianu, and started to pedal to warm up. (It feels like I'm going into a lot of detail before getting to the part about the actual spin class. Maybe this reflects the 8 months of not going before actually going. Let me jump to it.)

Spinning is full of contradiction. Did you know they put the bikes in front of mirrors and then turn the lights out? Play music so loud that the instructor has to shout into a head set mic and is still inaudible over the music? It's also incredibly repetitive. Once you start pedaling, you go around and around and around for an hour. In some ways, the most physically surprising thing that is also completely obvious (another contradiction) about spinning class is that you keep spinning. It's not that my legs got tired -- they didn't, because I made sure to use light enough resistance to last for the whole class -- it's that they got bored. Of spinning. And spinning. Tshuve. And spinning some more.

It sounds like I didn't like the class. I actually did. Rimma told me something incredibly useful at the beginning: no one is watching you. No one knows how much, or how little resistance is on your bike. Just keep pedaling. Do what she says, but if the instructor says to go faster, go as much faster as you want. If she says to put more resistance on, put as much more on as you want. I followed Rimma's advice (humility -- seek wisdom from everyone) and also did everything the instructor said to do. And except for the insanely uncomfortable crotch/butt situation, and my very tense neck, I liked it quite a lot.

This is turning into a long post, but I did do something else worth a mention. My friend Eric was in town, and he had an extra ticket to see Paul Weller (from the Jam) play at night. I'd never heard him play live in any of his configurations, so of course I said yes. As much as I hated the name (the Best Buy Theater) and corporatization (is that a word?) of the hall, the sound was amazing. We stood amidst a grove of extremely tall, white, men -- I had a sliver of a view, but could almost always see Paul's stunning silver bob, and listened to him play a full-out two hour show. I don't know his stuff well enough to identify it, but Eric does, and I learned afterwards that what I liked best came from his days with the Jam, and then his mid-career solo material. Sometimes I could hear the influence of my favorite band, the Who. But the thing I think I liked best about going to the show was going with Eric, and thinking about the few times we've gone out to music together over the 20 years we've been friends. Dan Bern, the out of town pre-Broadway run of Hairspray, and now Paul Weller. I wonder what will be next?