Dubi

Twenty-five years ago or thereabouts, when I was half the age I am now, my friends and I held coffeehouses on a suitably non-regular basis. We called them coffeehouses because at first we did them in an actual coffeehouse, in a church basement in Allendale, New Jersey. We realized that only one or two people showed up for our coffeehouses (and those only by accident), that we were putting them on just for ourselves, so we figured we could hold them anywhere.

We started in people's houses. We hiked to remote lakes or retreated to creekside barns and held them in the great outdoors. We even went back to the old coffeehouse once in a while to see if more people would show up. We brought along various instruments, did individual sets with all due seriousness, did improvisational group sets of dubious quality but redoubtable fun.

When my turn came around to hosting, I decided to parlay some recent good fortune and put on a coffeehouse that would be a true showcase for everyone I could get to participate. I rented an artists' loft in SoHo for one night at a time when real artists had lofts there and needed to rent them out on a nightly basis to make some extra money.

I got one friend to set up a sound system for the new country rock band he was trying to launch, and used it for sets by another friend trying to get a synth-pop effort off the ground, for my own set and those of my usual coffeehouse partners in musical crime, and for other performers I no longer can recall.

I got artist friends to decorate the place as if they were showing their work in a gallery (which none of them had to date). I got itinerant deadhead T-shirt makers to set up a tie-die stand. And I bought a keg of beer, plus some other refreshments which were duly ignored.

And then I invited everyone in the world I knew and told them to invite everyone in the world they knew.

I called it a Musical Invention Convention, and I called my phantom one-off promotion effort Ordinary Least Squares.

Why Ordinary Least Squares? I was working as an economist at the time (gave that up in short order, to my everlasting benefit). Ordinary least squares is an econometric methodology, a simple form of regression analysis that tries to find the commonality of individual observations around a trend line. Well, if that's not what we were -- regressing seriously in vain attempts to find an individuality that nevertheless identified us with the prevailing trends of the day -- then we were nothing.

We were square -- a bunch of squares trying to act as if we were hip and hoping that no one would notice just how square we really were. We were least-- never achieving hipness, but at least a lot less square than the silent majority of world squares. And we certainly were ordinary -- a bunch of ordinary joes trying to pull off something we hoped would be extraordinary but probably wouldn't be, though for one night, for the couple hundred people who showed up, we pulled it off.

Now, supposedly grown up, and scattered to the winds, but still the cultural, political, and social iconoclasts we always fancied ourselves, maybe the great big coffeehouse in the ethernet can bring us closer together. With way more free time on my hands than I know what to do with, and with my turn coming around again, this Ordinary Least Square is back in bidness.