Allergic to Failure

Steve Aoki trades Allegra for microsleep

By Ahmed Mori

Originally published in Z!NK Magazine

Not everyone is a morning person. Mine are riddled with coffee breath and hypnic jerks that often preface ‘Aha!’ moments, akin to a Tasered temporal lobe. Although on one particular morning, a more epiphanic jolt helped me realize my first ever Skype call would be an interview with Steve Aoki in Bryant Park.

List that under ‘bragging rights’ on my Google+ profile.

For those unacquainted with the electronic music and DJ scenes, Aoki is a silky-haired green tea junkie who presides over his audience like a conductor behind decks, brandishing imaginary katanas above his head. As son of former Japanese Olympic wrestler and Benihana founder Rocky Aoki, brother to supermodel Devon Aoki (and uncle to her newborn son, Hunter), the Miami-born, LA-based DJ hails from a family of A-type personalities with B-type swagger. His passport booklet looks like a teenage scrapbook, his list of Twitter contacts could sell for millions on eBay and his list of entrepreneurial ventures in the last three years alone would make MBA students and weathered businessmen watch him with the kind of skepticism the rest of the world harbors for James Franco.

With that said, Edison once criticized people who sleep eight to ten hours a day, claiming they were “never fully asleep and never fully awake”. Indeed, the image of Edison, Tesla and Ben Franklin battling sleep deprivation is a romantic one, as is the idea of Greek muses dropping off Temazepam prescriptions. In 2006, Aoki’s ‘Pillowface’ concept, defined as “what I consider my alter ego when I’m traveling, [in which] the only time I can sleep is on planes”, culminated in the following year’s Pillowface and His Airplane Chronicles, a debut mix album marked by collaborations with renowned names like Justice, Bloc Party, MSTRKRFT and Peaches.

Email me to read more, or purchase Z!NK Magazine’s September 2011 issue.

Salvation Army Seeks Funds for Summer Day Camp

By Ahmed Mori

Originally published in the White Plains Patch

Jesus Palacios first read about the Salvation Army in a letter from his wife, Elizabeth, on a bunk in the South Texas Immigration Detention Facility.

Palacios’s absence took a toll on his significant other, who worked round the clock to provide food for their children and finance her husband’s legal battles. His children were rebelling in school and treating Palacios as a stranger—acting coldly during phone conversations and not wishing to write him.

“In the first few months, [my children] were taking on strange attitudes, acting as if they weren’t mine,” recalls Palacios, who migrated from Mexico to White Plains 11 years ago with his wife. “They were becoming rebellious and weren’t learning much. The Salvation Army accepted my children into their program, and they changed greatly.”

Elizabeth Palacios first approached the Salvation Army of Greater New York to seek help caring for her children while she raised money to cover her husband’s legal fees.

The Salvation Army welcomed the Palacios family with open arms, enrolling their daughter, 10, and son, 6, in both the summer day camp and after school programs.

“The professionals at the Salvation Army explained to my children why I wasn’t there, and helped console both them and my wife,” said Palacios, whose run-in with immigration officers stemmed from an expired work permit.

Today, Palacios is a legal U.S. resident and is reunited with his family in White Plains.

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Manchester Orchestra, I’m From Barcelona & Black Francis Album Reviews

By Ahmed Mori

Originally published in Z!NK Magazine

Manchester Orchestra

When an album track features a debauch refrain like “alcohol and dirty balls, Pensacola Florida bars,” you expect a soundtrack for dives that serve free cheese puffs and Canadian beer, not an homage to confessional poets.

However, Manchester Orchestra’s Simple Math isn’t easy to enumerate, despite the basic arithmetic its title implies. Lead vocalist and songwriter Andy Hull penned an impressionistic view of life at 23 via a 10-track prie-dieu dialogue with his wife and God that often goes the Willy Loman route.

The wintry “Deers” prefaces the album’s more intricate stylings, establishing a Wordsworth-ian rural tone where Hull’s wails take center stage. “Mighty” follows with beefy riffs and operatic strings that make listeners forget this isn’t a prog-rock concept album about intergalactic war. The album’s abdomen, namely “Pale Black Eye” and “Virgin,” are reminiscent of their days as Brand New’s compadres, with the latter tune embodying the pent-up tension of Steve Carrell in a certain Judd Apatow flick.

Email me to read more, or purchase Z!NK Magazine’s May 2011 issue.

I’m From Barcelona

With a name inspired by a character in a ‘70s John Cleese sitcom, I’m From Barcelona specializes in dopamine-heavy pop that makes listeners want to raid the set of a Spike Jonze-Björk video collaboration. This tattooed smile aesthetic is telling of the band’s founder and lead songwriter Emanuel Lundgren, who would otherwise need Snow White’s forest charm to lure 29 musicians back to the lab every few months.

Forever Today’s opener, “Charlie Parker”, eulogizes the late jazz saxophonist by referring to his aviary nickname over a bed of horns and choral arrangements, as Lundgren commands a bird to “sing to [him] now” with jubilance typically reserved for overseas Coca-Cola commercials. This Haight-Ashbury ethos is exemplified throughout the 32-minute offering: “Get in Line” rejects Asch conformity experiments with the bravado of an indignant Millennial, while “Always Spring” reflects Scandinavian idealism as Lundgren’s concern over life’s pressing questions is expressed with ankle-biting candor and a slight envy of subtropical regions.

Email me to read more, or purchase Z!NK Magazine’s May 2011 issue.

Black Francis

Originally published in VenusZine.com

The title of Black Francis’ latest effort seems worthy of a Justin Timberlake B-sides album—only the former Pixies singer’s falsetto is better suited for a Tokyo karaoke bar after a sake or two.

NONSTOPEROTIK kicks off with “Lake of Sin,” a playground jump rope battle in Dante’s fifth bolgia that pits dueling guitars against Francis’ moribund vocals. The first tolerable song of the record is “Rabbits,” a synth-driven ballad that idly invokes the album title via its namesake’s high-breeding creature.

The brusquer core of NONSTOPEROTIK appeals to the guttural Pixies sound, especially in tracks four through six. Nevertheless, these numbers are plagued by bland arrhythmic poetry as found on “Wheels,” a cover of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ mind-numbing road-trip song that entices the wheels of my frontal lobe to focus on dinner ideas and to-do lists.

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Gay Marriage Supporters Celebrate at White Plains City Hall

By Ahmed Mori

Originally published in the White Plains Patch

On the last Sunday of June every year, David Juhren marches in the Pride parade in New York City. For Juhren, the lively executive director of the White Plains LGBT community center The LOFT, New York City’s Gay Pride events this weekend are ripe with opportunities for activism as thousands commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots of 1969.

This year, however, Juhren is attending a different kind of event. “I used to correct my friends, saying [Pride] will only be a parade when we gain our rights, and today we did just that,” he said.

Juhren’s jovial spirit was contagious among the dozens gathered on the steps of City Hall on Saturday afternoon with rainbow flags, signs and Human Rights Campaign stickers to celebrate the passage of New York’s same-sex marriage bill, which the state senate approved by a narrow margin of 33 to 29 Friday night. The group sang along to “Love and Marriage,” “White Wedding,” and “Chapel of Love” as Main street commuters honked in approval.

In the end, the mantra they shouted said it all: “What did we want? Equality! When did we get it? Yesterday!”

Organized by The LOFT, the organization’s website ensured the rally would transpire as long as the senate made a decision Friday night, only its purpose would be contingent on the vote’s results.

“And we don’t have a police permit,” said Juhren. “If they kick us out, we’ll just march down Main Street.”

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White Plains High School Crowned Tri-State Challenge Champ

By Ahmed Mori

Originally published in the White Plains Patch

It’s not everyday you walk away from a battle of wits with a $10,000 check that needs its own seat on the train ride home. For the White Plains High School academic team, however, winning the 2011 Tri-State Challenge Championship seemed like a routine win in the course of a marvelous season that tallied another 109.

“It’s weird to think that winning [the tournament] is out of the ordinary,” said junior Eric Smiley, 17, regarding the televised victory. “We don’t base our whole year off this win.”

Smiley’s teammates agree. Despite watching each of their wins throughout the course of the tournament on MSG Varsity’s fourteenth annual “The Challenge” TV quiz show for the last three months—the eclectic bunch admitted the real reward lies in the pleasure of competing.

“For a weird bunch of people who know a bunch of random things, we have fun,” said junior and current team captain Adam Jaffe, 17, who plans to compete again next year.

The varsity academic team, known simply as the “A-team”, is indeed jovial on their downtime. For instance, for the group’s annual “Night at the Movies” end-of-year celebration, they settled on “Spinal Tap,” and their sense of camaraderie is evidenced by rapid-fire quips and inside jokes.

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It’s Not Easy Being Green

An Eco-Chic Home Away From Home

By Ahmed Mori

Originally published in Z!NK Magazine

In the 1960s and ’70s, a gang of tie-dyed moralists cast enough stones to produce an eco-conscious ripple across American society, helping to catalyze the Environmental Protection Agency, the Green Party and other enduring green-friendly initiatives. Since then, the guise of green politics has evolved into the clean cut posterity of scruffy rebels, primped up in light of corporate standards to the point where the difference between Jerry and Andy Garcia became irrelevant. During the voyage from dashikis to eco-chic, the communes of Merry Prankster-lore have undergone an analogous makeover, turning over savvy efforts to make living accommodations as green as possible in response to contemporary economic and environmental conditions.

In 2006, renowned hotel chain Westin Hotels & Resorts unveiled the concept for Element, a large-scale green-friendly initiative aiming to transfigure the extended-stay market. Element is reportedly the first hotel brand in the country to require Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification by the U.S. Green Building Council for all properties, which mandates buildings lower operating costs through efficient use of water, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and trim down waste sent to landfills. As of 2010, LEED-certified Element locations have sprung up in cities like Las Vegas, Houston and Lexington, MA.

While skeptics have targeted similar green commercial endeavors in the past, the concept for Element delves beyond the lime green façade of corporate ‘greenspeak’. Westin’s new line of boutique hotels is Zen friendly and smartly designed, incorporating multi-purpose spaces to maximize space and minimize energy expenditure. However, Element’s naturally lit lobbies, complimentary Rise breakfast bar, fashionable happy hours, gargantuan Motion fitness centers and modular furniture don’t resemble the hemp-laden home décor found at a squatter-friendly green hostel tucked away in an East Berlin neighborhood.

Email me to read more, or purchase Z!NK Magazine’s November 2010 issue.