Where are you from?

Milwaukee.
 

Okay, that's the short answer. Give me the long one.

Well, the basic gist is that my parents grew up in the Soviet Union, defected in the ’70s to Israel, which they prefer to call “the motherland,” where I was born. When I was three they shipped me off to New York and we lived in Brooklyn until I was 14. Then we moved to Milwaukee and I spent the rest of my time there.
 

How did you end up at Macalester?

Spite. Pure spite. I took a year off after high school and everyone figured I wouldn't go to college, and so after that year I came to Macalester out of spite, mostly.
 

Why Macalester?

I wanted a small liberal arts school. I heard it was a decent place and was too lazy to actually look at other places, so I came here.
 

Was it the right decision?

Uh... up till last year, yes. This year, no.
 

What happened?

You know, the general nihilism and malaise of senior year just kicked in. I don't really care about school anymore!
 

I feel like I'm always seeing you doing work, though.

Doing homework? I do some of it. It's mostly the radio station that takes up my time though: reviewing CDs and talking to reps.
 

So what do you do at WMCN?

I'm a rock director, which I guess technically means that I'm the patron saint of indie rock, and competent. But really I'm neither of those.
 

The patron saint of indie rock?

You know, the effeminate white boy with glasses who spends far too much time listening to the Velvet Underground and deconstructing Pavement.
 

I was just listening to Pavement on my way here! But not deconstructing it.

Yeah, Stephen Malkmus kind of does the job for you.
 

So have you always been an indie rock cliché?

No, actually. I started out with some classic rock when I was in middle school. Steve Miller Band, Zeppelin. I got in to the Clash around 14, and then I became full-fledged, pure punk kid. Then I started listening to Sonic Youth and Gang of Four and the Pixies and at some point, I guess I embraced the cliché entirely.
 

What was your deal in middle school?

Awkward. I looked weird. I used to have a Guns n' Roses muumuu [a.k.a, a really large t-shirt], the Appetite for Destruction one. I played a lot of sports.
 

You what?

Yeah, people tend to find that funny. My ambition was to be a professional football player. But then I stopped growing and that went out the window.
 

What's the most embarrassing CD you've ever bought?

Jesus, good question. I've bought a lot of embarrassing CDs...
 

We can come back to that. Alright, I'm just gonna toss out a couple rumors that I've heard about you, which you can confirm or deny.

Okay, good.
 

You were once in a band called Danarchy.

No, no. I was in a band called Consolation Prize and my stage name was Danarchy. I was 15, my friend Ron suggested it and the nickname stuck for years, until college actually.
 

What did you play?

I played drums and sang, à la Phil Collins.
 

So whatever happened to Consolation Prize?

We tried to hold together. We beat the horse to death a couple hundred times over the years trying to play at parties and stuff. The whole thing eventually fell apart.
 

Most embarrassing CD?

Uh...
 

So your parents are Russian refugees?

Yeah.
 

Tell me the story.

Basically they were going to the University of St. Petersburg in the ’70s, they were Jewish and they got fed up with it. So they actually ended up stowed away on a cargo plane--they weren't allowed on because they didn't make the quota for immigration. And they ended up in Israel.
 

Are they religious?

Not particularly, but they feel really connected to Jewish ancestry and ethnicity. They're cultural Jews.
 

And then Brooklyn?

My dad's job. He's an electrical engineer. He was working for this company whose headquarters were based in Hackensack, New Jersey, but my parents didn't want to live in New Jersey. They knew nothing about it; it was purely rumor. So they decided to move to Brooklyn and my dad commuted. They had also heard about the overwhelming Jewish population there.
 

Any memories of Brooklyn?

I remember sitting on stoops. A lot. Other than that, not much. My parents used to make me go to a lot of Broadway shows. Like Miss Saigon.
 

Sounds traumatic.

Yeah, it was pretty traumatic. They also took me to see Six Degrees of Separation at Lincoln Center when I was six, and of course there's a whole full frontal nudity part. They were as shocked as I was. We were sitting in the front row, it was a matinee and so there was hardly anyone there. And all of a sudden there's this enormous black phallus in front of us. I was more mesmerized by it than I was shocked.
 

So are there Jews in Milwaukee?

A fair amount of Russian Jews in Milwaukee. But we live in a conservative, conservative yuppie community. Well-manicured lawns, that's all I can say about it.
 

You're a philosophy major?

Philosophy and Cultural Studies. It's a double major in futility.
 

What are you going to do with it?

Good question. All I know is that I'm going to Chicago, as far as next year. Take a couple years off, probably work at a gas station. Figure out if I want to go to law school or just continue starving.
 

What's your ideal job?

Either musician or music critic.
 

All you drink is vodka and Diet Pepsi.

Diet Coke. I call it Liquid Auschwitz. It was just for a while, but I'm actually trying to sober up these days.
 

Liquid Auschwitz?

Yeah, you know its my Jewish birthright. I get to make bad Holocaust jokes.
 

So if you're trying to sober up how come whenever I see you you're drunk?

[laughs] Cause I guess it's not working too well.
 

So you work at Risimini’s?

Yeah. I make calzones for people. I have my wonderful on-the-job alter ego, Giuseppe Marconi. I just decided if I was going to work at an Italian restaurant I needed to be Italian. Besides, everyone knows how tightly related Jews and Italians are.
 

How'd you get that name?

Pure stereotype. He makes pizzas. He makes calzones too, but he prefers pizza. It's an all right job.
 

Does he have an accent?

No. I don't do accents other than Tom Waits.
 

What was your favorite TV show growing up?

Wow. I'm kind of a TV junkie. Quantum Leap. Well, what age range are we talking?
 

Eight to 13.

Okay:Transformers. Small Wonder. Out of This World.
 

Oh my God, I love that show!

Yeah, it was great. Her dad was a crystal pyramid.
 

So whats your favorite show now?

Law and Order. It's pretty pathological. I'm addicted. That, and the Family Guy, pretty typical.
 

Have you seen Average Joe?

No, but it looks phenomenal!
 

It's terrifying. Anyway...Tell me about something you've destructed.

TVs. We've had some TV-on-TV violence before. I’ll go into the whole story if you want me to. Put simply, this past summer we were moving out of our old house, which was dubbed Fort Awesome. We had broken-down TVs and my friend Brian took one two stories up on the fire escape, threw it down and it careened into the TV that we lay the cords onto on the ground and there was this like, sonic boom, tons of gas. Broken glass everywhere.
 

So what’s been the best part of college?

Wow, this is a bad time to ask me that. I’m pretty jaded about everything. I guess the occasional, you know, enlightening class.
 

Best class?

It was a cultural studies senior seminar taught by Kiarina Kordela on film theory; Marx and Lacan and way too much Hitchcock. But I love Hitchcock. That was a great class.
 

So tell me how you really feel about the Hipster Handbook.

I’m kind of ambivalent towards it, I have to say. It’s pretty funny. But other than that.
 

You secretly love it.

I mean, it’s pretty funny. It’s definitely right on most of the time. But that’s more Andrew [Yeoman]’s department. He used to carry it around everywhere. It was ridiculous. Friendster, however, I’ve grown to despise.
 

Aren’t you still on Friendster?

I am. But I should really get rid of my profile. It’s kind of consumed everyone’s existence. And to a ridiculous degree. I saw someone at the Triple Rock last night with a Friendster t-shirt. Really sad.
 

So what kind of hipster are you?

The polit. But that’s just what everyone else claims. [defensively] Which one are you?
 

A WASH, I guess. And I don’t own the book.

Have you seen the new Action Heroine handbook? It’s a book along those lines. Just like, if you want to be an action heroine, this is the instruction manual. It’s got all these incredible frame by frame comic drawings.
 

So you want to be an action heroine?

I would love to be an action heroine. I’m too weak and feeble. And lazy.
 

Last chance: most embarrassing CD.

Candlebox. I don’t even know what the hell that album was called. Was it self-titled?
 

I don’t know. I didn’t buy it.