A few years ago in New York I got called in for jury duty in January.  I went to the court just like everyone else, sat in the auditorium for about an hour while they got things ready and sorted out.  Then with a group of about 40 people, I walked upstairs to a smaller room that looked much like a classroom in high school.  After waiting another 20 minutes for the lawyers to get there, we were finally ready to begin.  The lawyers began asking questions to people about insurance fraud.  This was obviously what the case was about and they were trying to find out who was the right or the wrong person to join a jury.  They got around to a ton of people, and a few of the younger people got to speak up about having to go back to college shortly.  I never once got asked a question (if I remember correctly), and because of this, none of the lawyers knew that I also had to get back to school in a week.

Sitting there waiting for the lawyers and judge to deliberate in the other room was not fun.  I almost felt like we had already been in court, and I was the one being prosecuted, and It was time to decide if I was guilty or not.  I was thinking to myself, “They didn’t even ask me anything, how could they put me on a case?  How do they know I am going to be what they are looking for.  How do they know I’m not an heir to the insurance company involved?”

After another 10 minutes, which felt like 45, the lawyers came in and called names.  Of course, I was a name called.  So I walked into this other smaller room where I was greeted by a Judge and the two lawyers I’ve already seen too much of.  On the table was this little wooden board with a few rows of slots, and in these slots were little wooden slabs with names on them.  This was their way of organizing a jury.  The judge sat me down and asked me if I’m prepared to be on a jury for a case that could last three weeks.  I said no.  This was the first time anyone was hearing that I had school to get back to.  The judge got pissed.  He immediately started to treat me like I was barely even a person.  With a raised voice and an attitude he said to me “go out to the receptionist and tell her to mark you down to come back in two years, will you be out of school by then?!?!”  As calm and collected as I could so I wasn’t thrown in jail, I walked out of the room and did what I was told.

When I got to the woman at the desk, she greeted me with a blank stare.  I said hello and politely explained to her my situation and of course, made her angry because she now had to actually do some work.  A lot of work too.  She had to pull up my name and change a date.  She then asked me, “What’s a good day for you 2 years from now?”  This is where I lost my politeness.  I said to her very annoyed, “Are you kidding?  How am I supposed to know what a good day for me is in two years?? I don’t even know if I’ll be living in New York then.  I have no idea what day is good for me.  Surprise me.”  I didn’t say the surprise me part but that would have been clever…and relevant.

In a couple weeks I have to be in New York for a wedding.  It’s also a few days after some of my closer friends in Boston leave to go on tour for quite some time and I was looking forward to seeing them off at their tour kickoff show.  I don’t have a job yet and I barely have any plans made this summer.  I’m just kind of rolling with the punches.  So that’s it.  Two things that I can say are solid plans for the rest of the summer.  June 12th and June 14th.

Surprise!  My mom calls me yesterday and let’s me know that I have been summoned for Jury Duty for June 9th.  So, of course this won’t effect the wedding I have to go to because it’s on a weekend, but this will definitely prevent me from seeing my friends off.  Couldn’t this have happened any other day?  Nope.  I’ve run out of ways to avoid it.  I have to go.

Which brings me to something that is on my mind.  I know there is probably no other way to pick Juries in this country, but is it just me or does the system really suck?  On the one hand, a jury full of random people is really smart because its harder for the outcome to be biased.  But on the other hand, if I was being tried, for something I know I didn’t do, I think I would be pretty uncomfortable knowing that the jury deciding my fate could consist of anyone.  There are no real qualifications needed for this job.  In fact, you could know nothing about the judicial system.  You could know nothing about about even what a jury is or does.  You could know nothing about the case.  As a defendant, you have to put your trust in someone that could not take the case seriously.  Or someone who just wants this to be over as quick as possible.  Or someone who is going to not pay attention to the facts or evidence all week and then be expected to make a life altering decision.  It just seems backwards to me.  I feel that I should have no business in a jury.  But the type of person I am, I will probably do my best to be fair.   But I do not represent every human being that gets called in on jury duty.

I guess it just goes to show that nothing in life is or ever will be perfect, and nothing in life is always fair. There are a small number of things that are black and white.  Sometimes you have to do something you don’t want to do.  As my mom always says to me.  “Life’s a bitch, and then you die.”

Now if only Tia Carrere would be on the same jury as me.  Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

While most kids my age were watching Power Rangers or playing in sandboxes or riding scooters, I was into some really different brands of fun.

From what I can remember and from seeing old home videos of me and my brother, we were always into the more violent side of childs play.  We used to put cowboy hats on and get out the toy guns and pretend we were in a movie shooting each other.  My brother would shoot at my feet telling me to dance, most likely because of Back to the Future.  We would jump off of our Little Tykes play house and roll around like we were on fire, whatever, we were nuts.

When I was in kindergarten, me and my brother got out the old toy axe from halloween.  It was made of plastic but much more dangerous then the company probably expected.  See right where the two halfs of this plastic toy met, there was a seam.  That seam ran right along the edge of the axe, right about in the same spot that a real axe would be at its sharpest.  We were using this axe to aid us in another violent game.  In this pretend movie we were making, I was the hero and my brother was the bad guy.  The plan was that he was going to capture me, tie me down to a table and then swing the axe at my neck in hopes to decapitate me.  What could go wrong?  It was a plastic toy.  Oh but the seam, my friend, the seam.  So at the last second, in true hero fashion, I was supposed to break free and turn away from the swinging villain, end scene.  My brother took his back swing, and then hurled the axe down towards me.  I began to move but it wasn’t in time, the axe had caught me right in the mouth.

I was a brave little kid that night, is what my parents told me.  I was so calm and collected while the doctor was giving me my stitches.  And now because I was so brave, my parents decided to give me an early Christmas gift.  It was a Macho Man, Randy Savage “Wrestling Buddy.”  Ooohh Yeaaah.  It was sweet.

Now, that kind of behavior was something I was always into.  When I was just a small child, I wanted so bad to be a stunt man.  I didn’t want to be a star of a movie, I wanted to be the one jumping around like mad man, risking injury for the sake of the star.  I was always telling my brother, “Throw me over the couch.”  And he would.  I was always jumping over stuff, hurting my body doing things most kids would do accidentally.  But I wanted to feel pain, it made me feel like a real stunt man.  I never did break any bones though, I think I was a little too young to think up real dangerous stunts, and by the time I was old enough, I had no desire to do dangerous stunts anymore.

One of the biggest heroes of my childhood though was the fearless Indiana Jones.  I was obsessed with those films.  And not only that, I was obsessed with the character.  I wanted to be Indiana Jones.  I was always asking for a cowboy hat (I know now its more of a Fedora).  And each year I think I got a different one.  Sometimes they were plastic and clearly came from the party store, but one year I got an official Indiana Jones Fedora from the Indiana Jones Gift Shop in Orlando Florida.  I even remember one version of a hat I would wear that my grandparents got me, which was a green safari hat.  Not quite an Indy hat, but It was cool to pretend that I was my own.

So I had this hat, and I found a dress shirt.  Then I would go into my mom’s room and ask her for an old pocket book (or purse.)  You know, because Indiana Jones always had that Man Bag around his shoulder.  I’d use rope as a whip, I’d have a fake gun.  And by myself, I would go out in the back yard and pretend I was Indiana Jones for hours.  I’d be climbing and jumping off things, it was amazing.  One of the funner things I could remember doing when I was young.

Fast forward many years to 2008.  May 22nd, 2008 to be exact.  Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  I feel like Star Wars nerds probably felt when the Prequels were announced.  The trailer looks amazing and rumor has it this movie is going to be better than all the originals.  I gotta say I kinda feel like going to buy a fedora right now, that’s how excited I am.

A ton of Bryman history blogs lately, huh?  I promise the next one will be a strong opinion of something!

-Bryman

I know I haven’t really been writing a lot of blogs anymore and I’m sorry but I think this change of atmosphere from New York to Cape Cod has given me a different energy. But I’m doing my best! I figured I’d let everyone know more about what I do here at the Cape. Let’s start with a little history. This is going to be long and informative, you’ll begin to understand a little bit more about me and as I love to say… get to know me.

The longer history of it is that my family has always had a house in Cape Cod, since long before I was born and although I don’t remember the original house so much, It’s right down the street from this one and well there are a few memories that have stuck. As I got older, my Great Grandparents sold the house and lived primarily in New York. But that didn’t stop my family from coming to the Cape, oh no, it didn’t. So me and my cousins grew up very aware of what this lovely little place had to offer; the mini golf, the go karts, Main Street, Four Seas Ice Cream, Steve and Sues, Tastee Tower, Baxters, Golden Boy, Hearth and Kettle, the list goes on. So year after year we would all come up and stay at Cape Point or that Mariner or whatever and do the vacation thing.

Then (and I’m making a guess at this) about five years ago, my Grandma and Grandpa bought a house on the same street as the old family house. The whole family came together to do a lot of work on the house, including adding another room, a laundry room, and another full bathroom. My grandparents’ main purpose for buying the house was to have a place for the family to gather every summer whenever they felt like coming here. Not too long after however, my Grandpa passed away, so it was just my Grandma living here most of the year. Now we’ve always been a close family, and after my Grandpa passing away, we just got even closer and the house has been used even more than I think he would have hoped and I can’t help but know he is extremely happy to have provided us with this house.

And that is the story of how this whole thing came to be. But that’s not the end of it. And this is just about the part where the Cape house has become one of the most important places in my life.

At the end of my 4th semester at Berklee I was starting to feel a bit down because here I was in Boston at music school and I just couldn’t seem to get a hold of the whole band thing. I wasn’t finding musicians to play with. Through Eric, I met Asad who had a band that just started forming. They had been playing a few shows here and there as an acoustic rock band but their style was taking off in a whole new direction and me and him started to click. So it was planned that I would be joining the band after that summer. However, after things grew increasingly troublesome between me and my girlfriend and she said “why don’t you just go to Boston now” (trying to have some kind of impact that would favor her) I said, “ok, done.” And that was that. I moved to Cape Cod so I could play in Fly Upright Kite. No more about Fly Upright Kite, that would be another blog and this is already going to be a long one.

So since I first moved to the Cape, things in the family started to really pick up fast. My cousin Mike got married and had a child, and my Cousin Dan got married as well. The family was growing and the Cape House was a hot spot. We ended up playing so much Mini Golf that my cousins started keeping track of scores and eventually we made it into a family competition each summer. Yeah, thats right. We have a plaque and record Balls, and an excel spreadsheet, oh and official rules too. It’s pretty awesome. The fourth of July usually attracts a lot of family and we go down to our beach and watch fireworks, barbecue and etc. After Memorial Day, there is usually family in the area almost every week. Things are pretty mellow here outside of mini golf though, we sit at the beach, sit out in the front yard with the baby, cook out on the grill, go down Sweet Street.

Sweet Street is what the family has started to call Main Street in Hyannis. This because as my cousin Mike puts it.. when you go shopping on Main Street, it always ends up being the same every time. You walk passed all the same stores, like the Army and Navy Store, Spinakers (record store), and it usually just consists of looking at stuff in stores like this and saying, “this is pretty sweet…this is sweet…dude this is pretty sweet.” But you don’t ever buy anything.

So thats that. Theres a lot of really awesome things here that my family does and I can list them all but you wouldn’t get all of them unless you came and just experienced it. I know Dan has been here and has experienced Tastee Tower so he knows whats up. He also signed the guestbook, which everyone who visits signs everytime they leave. Doesn’t matter how often you are here, you sign it everytime with what you did in your stay.

So now I haven’t been in Fly Upright Kite in a while and you ask me, why are you still there? Well two summers ago my dad found a bike trail up in Dennis. He started taking me there and it quickly became one of my favorite things to do on the Cape. I was riding so much that summer. I started riding it in July and by the time I left to move into my Apartment in Allston, I had been doing 30+ miles a day, about five days a week. In 3 months (including a month that I rode along the Charles River in Boston) I had lost 50 pounds. This is the point where I probably met most of you who are reading this, so unless you remember me from my first year in Fly Upright Kite, you probably only know me as the dude at the time when I lost all that weight.

So two years have passed and I’ve probably put back almost half of that weight back. The summer was coming and I wanted to be back in Massachusetts really bad so I decided to grab my bike and come back to the Cape, where I lived for two of the last three summers. I decided I’d ride all summer long, and thats what I’m doing. I had a good first month but now the weather is a little too rough for riding and it hasn’t really been getting better. But I am back up to riding 30 miles a day and as soon as the weather is back to the right conditions I will be out there.

Now for what I love about the trail. I ride through everything amazing about the Cape. I ride along beaches, I ride passed cranberry bogs, I ride passed marshes, over highways, around and through golf courses. I put on my iPod and I just forget about everything. It is seriously the most peaceful thing I could ever think of doing. To have some amazing music playing in my ear and to just look out as I ride by a beach, it’s like one of the most beautiful things. I wish I could fashion a helmet Cam so everyone I know can experience what I do. I plan on riding the full trail (52 miles) with my dad when he comes up for the fourth of July.

There are other things that I notice on the trail too, some that piss me off, but some that just make me laugh. Trails aren’t necessarily used for what I use them for. For me they are this sense of peace and such a relaxing, desirable way to become a healthy person. Riding the trail makes me want to eat healthy, and it just makes me healthy, and I don’t even hate it. There are a lot of people who walk or run or bike this trail. But I would say the majority of people are those who are families taking there children on a nice bike ride. They go rent bikes and they hit the trail. These people to me are the funniest people. They are all the same. Ok check it, so theres always the one person in this party who owns their own bike and is the most experienced and is probably the one who suggested this activity. This person is most likely always out in front, they have a nice bike, good gear, they are all business. Then you pass them and you see the kids and then the moms or dads (depending on which is the experienced biker). And the look on their faces is priceless, and it’s always the same. It’s this painful smile that stretches far across their face. They are swaying uncomfortably side to side trying to have fun, but they are struggling. These uphill areas were not what came to mind when they were in the bike shop renting bikes to go on a joyful family bike ride. And you can see they are trying so hard to keep up.

Some other people include the girlfriends. You know, the two women with fresh babies who are best friends and say let’s go on the trail and walk these babies in their strollers. Yeah, these women piss me off. This is a bike trail, not the sidewalk. There are people focused here. They don’t need to have to be slowed down because Claire’s husband cheated on her with his secretary and who’s gonna take care of the baby? Single file ladies! Let me through. You’re friggen strollers take up too much of the trail when you’re side by side. Save this conversation for Starbucks.

Dog walkers. Look, I love dogs, I really do. But if you’re going to walk your dog’s on a bike trail, first, LEASH THEM. Second, Keep the leash short. Third, Get off the cellphone and focus on your animal and where it is going. It doesn’t understand when I say “coming up on your left.”

“Left,” hmm, that’s a tricky concept isn’t it? I thought this was America? Wouldn’t it make sense to treat a trail like a road? Stay on your RIGHT. Yeah, and you stubborn walkers/runners…. I’m on a BIKE. It goes faster than you and will HIT YOU. I DON’T MOVE, YOU MOVE. Get the hell over to your side of the trail, don’t friggen look at my like I’m on the wrong side.

On the topic of treating the trail like a road. When you turn onto a road, or when you turn around, make a u-turn for example, what do you do? You LOOK. If you’re a person who is running on the trail and decides they are going to turn around and just gracefully turn around without looking and causing me to jam on my brakes, well then I don’t like you.

Children! Where are your parents? This trail is not a skate park or a soccer field. Go away!

Okay I think that’s enough about the people on the trail.

So that my friends, that is a little about my summers at the Cape. The most important thing to me that transcends music if you don’t know yet is my Family. That is what Cape Cod means to me…family. And the best part of my family is that everyone that I am friends with will be accepted as a part of the family. So please feel free to visit me. Eat Tastee Tower pizza, come get Four Seas Ice Cream, qualify yourself to win some titles on the Mini Golf Plaque, drink beers on the front yard after you help the hot older neighbor move her new couch into the house. Whatever.

Thanks for getting into my life.

and it’s good to be…..

writing to you again?

-Bryman.

Currently Listening To

Death Cab for Cutie – Narrow Stairs

John Mayer’s first official release was on September 18, 2001, just 7 Days after September 11, 2001.

As we all know by now (maybe it’s taken a 7 years for you to hear the news), on September 11, 2001, the twin towers, and Pentagon were “attacked” (those quotes are for my buddies who have seen the film “Loose Change”). Two planes, two towers, way too many deaths. Need I say more?

Like I said, we all know what happened. In fact you can ask anyone in the U.S. where they were when the attacks happened, and they’ll tell you exactly where.

..however..

Can you tell me where you were when you first heard “No Such Thing” by John Mayer, just 7 days later? Few of you can. I don’t remember exactly where I heard it for the first time, but I remember some moments in high school when me and a select few friends were able to hold manly, unashamed conversations about this dude. I at least remember which local CD store I bought the album in. Enough of this crazy talk, where am I going with this?

Well I’m a sucker for pop music. I know all about why I shouldn’t like it. But I don’t care. I end up liking a lot of it. And John Mayer’s “No Such Thing” was no exception. After hearing that song, I went to buy the album and low and behold, on the album came a Two song sampler or “the Wind Cries Mary – Jimi Hendrix” and “Lenny – Stevie Ray Vaughan.” Then after realizing he attended the same college I was preparing to apply to, and finding out he actually played all the guitar on the album, I was even more into him. When I know someone’s playing guitar, I can recognize if they are doing good things with the instrument and well, they could be writing some real cheesy pop music but I could really love whats going on.

Now, John Mayer’s career has been a struggle in ways other than CD sales and Money. It took him a long time to become a credible person. He wrote a debut album that appealed to pop fans, and only about one or two songs on the album would hit home with certain guitar fans. There was a small appreciation for his playing in the guitar community but for the most part, people thought he was a stupid pop star with nothing to offer but a reason for 12 year old girls to start bugging their parents for tickets to see him play. The mention of his name on a message board or in school would only attract a majority of people saying he sucks.

Here’s what I noticed about John Mayer while he was so hated. Old interview video’s of him showed he was smart and witty. Each video got increasingly smart and increasingly funny. But not a lot of people would see this because who watches a video of someone they think sucks? Here’s something else. The fact that he was putting out sampler’s of him covering blues songs was a good indicator of what he was really doing. He was a man of many talents and with a need for communication. He could write a great pop song, he could play guitar with a lot of soul and he had great influences lost in modern day music. He knew what he was doing all along. He was easing his way into the world. If you didn’t know a lot about him, and you can guess I did because I’m a huge Stevie Ray Vaughan fan, you probably didn’t hear that sampler and you probably didn’t really know how good of a guitar player he was. You also probably didn’t know how smart and funny he was (am I trying to date him or what?) and in all of that you probably didn’t understand what he was planning throughout his career. Maybe he didn’t even know, but it’s clear to all now. He was bridging gaps, and taking this pop crowd back into some of the values of an older generation. He was relate able enough to the young to draw them in and creative enough to draw in an older generation.

If you skipped his first DVD “Any Given Thursday,” then you still might not have gotten him. In that DVD he showcased much more of his guitar playing. But when people first began to realize what it was he was doing is when he went on Austin City Limits with Double Trouble (SRV’s band) and Buddy Guy (and their tour to follow). Here you saw a guy drawing a younger pop crowd into blues and at the same time an older blues crowd into pop. At first you had the younger kids saying “man that old dude sucks, John is way better than him.” And at the same time the older or blues appreciators saying “you don’t even understand who Buddy Guy is! John will never touch him.”

Then John did an even smarter thing and put out (after a couple pop albums) TRY! which was a new band and a new Idea of more guitar based music and really putting his blues side out there. It set him up perfect for an appearance with John Scofield and many others outside the pop genre. In turn all this was followed by his album Continuum. He had also been making more of a name for himself as a funny guy, appearing on VH1 and the like.

Now on message boards and in groups of your average peers, when he is mentioned, you get an extreme appreciation and where there was once only a few people that would say something like “yeah he’s pretty good,” now there are in fact few people who still don’t like him. Most people now know him as a really funny, smart, talented musician who has fans stretching across many oceans of genres and ages. I may be going out on quite a limb right now but I say this because I really believe it. John Mayer is one of the most important musicians in music in the last 10 years. If not more. In using old, familiar ways, he was able to get to a new place. Isn’t that what makes the important musicians important?

By this point you’re probably asking yourself how I can relate him to George W. Bush. Well, on the day (keep in mind I started writing this before midnight) that is the 5th anniversary of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech, regarding the war, he is also at a lower approval rating then Nixon was at the hight of Watergate. He can officially go down as arguably THE worst President this country has ever had. This also comes at a time when John Mayer is soon to release a new Live DVD on July 1st I believe.

In the same seven years, it seems as though as George Bush’s approval ratings were gradually dropping to a level no one would have expected on 9/11, John Mayer’s approval ratings were doing the same thing. Only they were gradually growing.

Go out and buy John Mayer’s Live DVD on July 1st, 2008, and I promise you that you won’t be disappointed.

And Go out and VOTE TO CHANGE on November 4th, 2008 and I promise you that you won’t be disappointed. Just to quickly note: When I say vote for change, I’m not pushing any one way. I hope you’ll vote for yourself. But just so you know my point of view. A vote for John McCain is a vote for 4 more years of George Bush, not change. But if you feel differently, if you like McCain and still think that is a change, then I respect that. The point is, be a part of something. Vote.

It’s good to be back.

-Bryman