Dave Alpert: I Know Where You’re Going with That

One of my oldest and closest friends died on Friday morning.  I won’t go into detail, but I don’t remember ever feeling so much pain in my heart.  Jennifer was one of the most special people I have ever met.  Her smile and unique nature will be part of me forever.

I don’t want to talk about who she was or what she meant to me, but I want to honor her with this one one fun fact.  When Jennifer was graduating from high school, her dad lived in Hong Kong and ran a business that exported stuff to the US.  He was shipping some of those wallet inserts that hold credit cards and photos, but somehow destroyed the photo fo the model that was to grace the cover of the packaging.  (It’s sort of like those frames you buy with a picture already in them.)  Without any better choice, he used her high school graduation picture for the art work.  Now these inserts were sold all over the US at Woolworth’s until the stores closed in the late ’90s.  I was always comforted by the fact that I could go anywhere in the US and see my good friend.  I don’t remember in which state or when I bought this one, but I just grabbed this from the glove compartment of my car…

I love you, sweetie!

I was heading over to my favorite writing spot, wondering what this blog post would be all about.  Would I tirade about the traffic around the city in the past few weeks?  Would I shamelessly plug my next acoustic show (at the All Asia on Thursday)?  The answer hit me like a bucket of water over the head–literally.

I was trucking down Boylston Street, passing the Boston Fire station on the corner of Hereford St.  This one:

As I was walking past the first garage door (on the left), there were some important looking firefighters standing there, talking, making announcements.  Just then a torrent of water flew out of the second floor window, entirely drenching one of the guys standing below.  Lucky for me, I only got SOAKED!  I stared up at the window, at least expecting a “sorry dude, my bad,” but I got nothing.  Bastard.  Fortunately, my blogging tools–computer, digital camera, Advil–were left unhurt.  I drip-dried in the afternoon sun.  No harm, no foul.

Hey, I’m no hater.  The life of a fireman seems pretty cool–except for the part about risking life and limb and running into burning buildings.  Now I can see why my buddy Vazquez, when waxing philosophical about what he’d do with his life “if the whole rock and roll thing” with his band Damone doesn’t work out, said, “Firefighter, dude.  Figherfighter!”  On second thought, knowing Vaz’s antics, let’s just hope the band hits it BIG.  If it had been him in that second floor window, that wouldn’t have been just water!

I know that in the 70s Boston was the hub of school desegregation violence in Massachusetts.  Even today, Boston stands as a pretty segregated city.  Still, I have been of the belief that things are getting better, and that pockets of the city are starting to show signs of racial integration.  I live in the East Fenway, a neighborhood between the Back Bay and South End.  It always has seemed racially diverse and a place where there is a lot of respect for different types of people.  After all, there are many mixed communities here and students from Berklee, NEC and Northeastern seem to add to that diversity.  Nevertheless, I walked by Cappy’s on Westland Ave tonight to see this car sitting in front:

I only hope that it was a prop in a school production of Mississippi Burning or something.  But it’s probably not.  Welcome to Beantown!

Does anyone know the backstory behind this mess???

I just read this disturbing news tidbit about a kid that got ten years in jail for getting a consensual blowjob from a 15 yr old when he was 17.  Who else was giving blowjobs when we were 17???  They’re all 15-17.  I wonder how much of congress would have gotten jail time?

I guess  that some of the party where it happened was caught on tape.  Once again, I am sure glad that there weren’t camera phones when I was a kid.  That was a sexually confusing part of our lives when our hormones were out of control, and all of us did stupid things–and not so stupid things.  I mean, hello, we’re talking BLOWJOBS!

One silver lining is that the law that allowed this has since been changed.  Still, the attorney general down there is trying to keep the kid in jail.  One humorous part of the story is that the jailed kid’s defense attorney’s name is B.J. Bernstein.  That’s awesome.

On Tuesday, I played a type of show I’d never played before.  It was Jillian Santella’s Songwriters Circle at All Asia in Cambridge, MA.  Despite the fact that these events are called Songwriters Circles or concerts “in the round”, they are generally a straight line.  Here’s what we looked like:

Yup.  It was me and three girls… Nice.

The format of the show was that each of us took turns playing a song.  It was fun to get to listen to everyone’s songs, and unlike other shows where fans often leave after the band they came to see, it encouraged the audience to stay for the entire show.  On the other hand, it was very trying as a performer.  I, for example, write short pop songs and strive to share the time.  Others write longer singer/songwriter songs.  In the end, that meant that I waited 20 minutes between singing songs and it was challenging to connect with the audience, especially since other performers felt comfortable chiming in whenever the spirit moved them.  (Below, you can hear Jillian, the host, interrupt my introduction to the last song.)  Overall, I had a great time, however.  All the performers were cool, and because Jillian brings her own sound man, the sound in the room was pretty good. 

I ended my set with Peace of Mind, the title track from my EP.  Check out my performance below. 

 

Click To Play

I usually don’t walk into Starbucks.  It’s not that I don’t like their coffee; they make a fine brew.  But I am a loyal Espresso Royale guy and usually don’t find occassion to walk into other coffee shops–well, unless of course I’m on a date.  (You don’t shit where you eat as they say, and there’s no reason to bring a stranger into your home.)  But I digress.  Today, I walked into a Starbucks and ordered an iced coffee, not a specialty drink, but a plain old coffee with ice in it.  The girl at the counter grabbed her Sharpie and asked me to give her my name.  I replied, “No.”  She said, “What?!?”  I said, “Fine.  My name is ‘X’.  This led me to thinking about personal freedoms, privacy… and what I’m willing to give away (for a cup of coffee).

Interestingly, most discussions around this topic center around two issues nowadays.  The first is identity theft, and how personal info can be comprimised by technology–stolen laptops, stolen databases, etc.  The other is around spying, war, the Patriot act, wire tapping, etc.  But rarely do we think about the information that we willingly give people every day.

The issue with Starbucks isn’t that they ask me for my name.  It’s that they write it on the rim of my cup.  First, I don’t want fresh permanent marker ink on the exact spot on the cup where I put my mouth.  More importantly, however, I don’t feel that I should have to walk down the street flashing personal information to everyone I pass.  I know that before I left the counter, I saw “Scott” who drinks an Americano and carries a BU backpack and “May” who likes her caramel machiato with extra caramel.  In and of itself, this seems fairly benign.  I mean, what did I really learn about these people, and what could I really do with that information?

Being asked to provide your first name is just the tip of the iceberg, however.  Supermarkets provide extra benefits and discounts for making purchases with a card.  They use the process to track my specific spending habits, the time of day I shop and more.  The worst is the amount of times we are needlessly asked provide a Social Security Number.  Originally created as part of the New Deal Social Security program in 1936, the numbers were intended to be used just for tracking income for Social Security purposes.  Later, they came to be used by the IRS and other governement agencies.  Despite the fact that the Privacy Act of 1974 regulates the way government agencies use our SSN’s, businesses are not regulated.  While we are not required to provide private businesses a SSN, according to this Social Security Administration FAQ, it appears that business are permitted to deny us goods and services for not giving it away.  So I guess we’re screwed. 

This article does a good job of explaining the risks associated with providing your SSN in cases when they are not required.  The main issue is that you are providing organizations access to information they have no right to see, and this may lead to descrimination or worse.  Another issue is that with so many agencies and organizations using the same number to collect information, privacy is comprimised.  According to my friend Abraham, when Congress debated issuing the numbers, much of the discussion centered around not wanting the numbers to be used as federal ID numbers and these same privacy issues.

So, back to Starbucks…  Your cash registers are more sophisticated than the computers NASA first used to help put a man on the moon.  So, instead of asking me for real personal information, why not use that thing to randomly generate a name for my cup of coffee.  And while your at it, ask your baristas to write that crap near the bottom of the cup where I’m not likely to put it in my mouth.