Brian Alvey

My favorite little world class rock station in New York’s backyard just turned two and celebrated with a concert in White Plains on Friday night. Niki and I spent the evening without kids for the first time in a long time. Well, I’m on the road right now so that happens more often for me than her, but it was nice to put on some makeup — more her than me — and hit a bar to watch a couple of singer-guitarists, meet the Make A Wish ladies and mingle with the talent behind a great radio station.

On the way to the show we had The Peak on and they played Suzanne Vega’s Blood Makes Noise. Who else would play that song? College radio?

We saw a story on them in the local Westchester paper, so I had a good idea what everyone looked like.

Between Jeffrey Gaines and Glenn Tilbrook’s sets, I spent a few minutes chatting with program director and creator Chris Herrmann about how the station came to be and how its listeners are so connected to The Peak. It began as a peek into his own iPod and quickly attracted some veteran DJs like Jimmy Fink. We had some friends over one Saturday night for cards a year ago and after listening to The Peak all evening long they asked if it was our own CD collection. You barely notice the commercials. You can listen to them online while you’re in VA on a business trip.

About six months ago I did a phone survey where they wanted to know what I liked in a radio station. By the end of the call I had figured out that it was KRock trying to figure out what to do for a format when Howard Stern moved on to satellite radio, but I frustrated the caller over and over. “Who do you listen to in the morning?” they’d ask. “The Peak,” I’d say. “What station is that?” “107.1. You can’t get it in the city.” “You mean WBLS, 107.5?” “Um…no, that’s an R&B and Soul station. The Peak is 107.1. They play Jack Johnson, Elvis Costello, Marc Broussard, The Strokes, The Killers, old stuff, new stuff, you know, world class rock?”

Congratulations, Chris!

I have to say that I don’t totally understand my Canadian sister and I doubt she understands me either.

But when I have a gallon of Coors Light in me and Glenn Tilbrook is on stage singing I could only feel closer to her if we were Siamese twins.

A few weeks ago, Niki and I met Rachael Ray’s half-sister, but she wasn’t aware of her family connection.

Our waitress came over and when she smiled you would have sworn it was a younger Rachael Ray. We told her who she reminded us of and she said that we weren’t the first people to tell her that. Then she added that it was funny because she comes from the same small town that Rachael Ray does in upstate New York. She walked away and Niki and I both said at the same time, “Paternity test!”

I mean, she even went into the food services business just like her older half-sister. How coincidental is that?

The whole time we were waiting for our food I was hoping that she would load her arms up with more items than a regular non-celebrity human waitress could carry just to see if she could do it in one trip. She didn’t, but it did smell awesome and it was delish!

Congratulations to Reese Witherspoon on her Oscar for best actress. I’m a voting member of the Academy, but one with lots of distractions, so I didn’t get a chance to review Walk The Line. I voted for her anyway, largely because she was brilliant as Tracy Flick in Election. I hope she tops her own $30 million record paycheck when she signs on for Legally Blonde III: The Wrath of Blonde.

Now I’m a huge Johnny Cash fan — I myself shot a man in Reno just to watch him die — but I was annoyed that they didn’t go with any of my Walk The Line screenplay edits so I never watched the final cut. I had this great scene where Johnny Cash goes to pick up his Tony Lamas and one of the stagehands grabs them first and apologizes saying, “Sorry, sir. These boots were made for Joaquin.”

I bring them comedic gold and they opt for serious.

Niki and I turned 75 today. Guess which one of us is 45 and which one is 30. (Okay, so we’re both still in our thirties…I’ve got a lot of gray.)

I kicked the day off with a 6am conference call. AOL hosting did some networking upgrades for us and I guess it’s better to get an early start and stretch the day out than to sleep in and risk missing the whole thing.

We’re having some people over this weekend to celebrate the “coolness that is us” — my words, not Niki’s — and I’m psyched to see them all. Walter and Kim Some of them have new babies and never visit or call anymore. Jeffrey and Carrie Some of them can’t make it because they’re famous and busy speaking at some web geek event in Texas.

A long time ago, I registered march6.com and this year I considered putting up a quick March 6 blog and doing the 30 or 40 posts I had saved up over the last couple of weeks while my own blog was upgrading to our new publishing system. I figured I would post all day long every year, but only on March 6 and then I figured who wants to spend their birthday blogging? More specifically, who is foolish enough to spend his wife’s whole birthday blogging?

What if I queued up all the posts in advance or got some March 6 birthday celebs like Ed McMahon, Shaquille O’Neal, Michelangelo (and his virus), AOL blogger Tom Arnold and David Gilmore to contribute?

Maybe next year, guys.

Spamalot is amazing. Niki and I saw it a few nights ago and it was a mix of Monty Python lines everyone knows by heart and some crazy new musical stuff just for Broadway.

Afterwards we met Hank Azaria and David Hyde Pierce. Everyone else was all like “I loved you on Frasier”, but I played it cool and told him “you were awesome as Slim in A Bug’s Life.” That must have really impressed him because he gave me his email address. He’s my new best friend now. Sorry, Darby!

Ten years ago today, my aunt Nanette suggested that her friend Niki send me an email and flirt with me. We were both in dead-end relationships and she thought we’d get along great. We had the same birthday. We had similar senses of humor. We both loved Nanette.

It was a great idea. We’ve been married seven and a half years. We’re moving to our second house together. We’re on our third car. We’ve survived a world of pregnancy problems. We’ve lost one dog and gained two more. We have two fantastic sons. We’re closer than ever.

And we still love Nanette.

Thanks, Nanette!

This is a great week. Every month our growing Weblogs, Inc. and Blogsmith teams converge at a hotel in New York for a few days and we work together around the clock to advance the platform, eat sushi, whiteboard, eat Candlelight, code, code, eat sushi and write more code. These trips have been described as “like prison, but without all that crazy sunlight, exercise and human interaction”, “an endurance test that leaves me broken and passed out for a full day when I get home” and “the last nail in the coffin of my relationship with my girlfriend.”

It’s magical.

It’s great news for our bloggers. Next week they’ll have a bunch of new features and many old ones will be working more smoothly.

The interesting thing is that it’s not much different from how we work when we’re not together. Everyone has iPod headphones in their ears. Everyone is staring at their own laptop. Almost all conversation is over IM.

Did I mention that it’s magical?

We went to Florida for Thanksgiving and Niki visited relatives with the boys while I worked with Gavin on Blogsmith, getting it ready for Weblogs, Inc. It was a pretty good trip at the beginning. I got Gavin a PowerBook and he immediately fixed a bunch of things that didn’t work in Safari. The last two days of the trip everyone was sick with fevers except for me and we didn’t know if we’d be heading for home on our scheduled flight.

We came home to LaGuardia as planned, got our bags and headed to the parking lot where our car was waiting for us. The side of the driver’s headlight had some rubber hanging down and there were dents in the side panel like it had been hit, but the angle was strange. It was hard to imagine someone pulling out of the space next to us and messing up our car like that. Niki walked around the front of the car to the other side and informed me that our entire passenger-side headlight was gone.

These aren’t small headlights. They also aren’t expensive. Someone thought they were these hi-intensity expensive bulbs. It must have been a two-man job and when one got the first headlight off, he must have let the other guy know that they had screwed up. So they cut some wires and left a giant hole in our car. You could see down into the engine and watch the fans spin while Niki and the boys huddled in the car to escape the New York chill we had returned to.

I filled out reports. LaGuardia was kind enough to give us a break on our parking bill since they let our car get vandalized. The whole ride home I had that Wallflowers song running through my mind and that song always takes me back to a roadtrip my sister and I made in North Carolina a lifetime ago.

Come on try a little. Nothing is forever.
There’s got to be something better than in the middle.
But me & Cinderella, we put it all together.
We can drive it home with one headlight.

Yesterday morning I called Jack to let him know that his little brother Victor was no longer inside mommy. At 9 pounds, he was nearly 50% larger than Jack and his delivery took only half the time. I think they call that Moore’s Law of Birthing. If we have another child, I am expecting that he or she will be a 12 pound baby delivered after only 2 hours of labor and 20 minutes of intense pushing.

Niki was amazing.

When Niki gave birth to Jack, I helped coach her breathing and held one of her legs. After they took Jack away, I took a step back (out of striking distance) and told her, “I don’t know if I could go through that again. That was rough!”

So this time, after they took Victor away, I leaned over and said, “Do you remember how last time I said I didn’t think I could do this again? Well, I did it!”

I’m sure she’s proud of me too.