Sunday, July 27, 2008

Keith hips out

The greatest finder of just-about-to-be hip neighborhoods is my friend Keith. He lived on Clinton Street on the LES when it was bodagas. Then he moved to N. Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg when it was pierogi city. Both areas are now of course filled with cafes, bars, and clubs.
Keith finally bought a place in a semi-industrial zone where S. Willimsburg (the Hasidic part) and Clinton Hill/Bed-Stuy converged. Nice apartment, but the area was only served by the infamous G (the ghost train, the gangster local) train that doesn't go into Manhattan at all.
Article today in NYT says that the area's gentrification, embodied in a building one of the residents called "The Yuppie Spaceship," is faltering. THe one hipster cafe failed. Some condo prices have come down, and some blacks have yelled epithets at whites and others.
Still, some residents think gentrification will happen, but in fits and starts. Maybe.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Mr. Jefferson regrets that he cannot atttend

Unlike New York, Philadelphia requires no test and license before becoming a tour guide. The head of the tourism board decided that he would take the various tour services (horse-drawn carriage, amphibious craft, and plain buses.)
I should have saved the article he wrote in the Inquirer, but suffice to say there were more than a few howlers.
The best was City Tavern. This is a reconstructed 1773 tavern/restaurant near Independence Hall. A tour guide told his captive audience that Lincoln and Washington used to dine there together. This of course would have made Washington about 150 years old, if the tavern was actually active at the time.
I took the test in New York, which is ridiculously easy ("what borough is Manhattan a part of?") A bureaucrat came out and told me that I had scores in the 90-plus range. This did no good for me, because a license is granted for simply passing. My high score didn't make much difference(what did I expect, Phi Beta Kappa?).
The money, what there is of it, is in foreign language tours (not counting Spanish because too many people know it). I did manage to convince a driver to come pick up my brother on Lexington in the 30s, for his birthday, far from our official route. He took the microphone and made up complete BS for the tourists.
The only thing tour companies should emphasize is keeping your head down. Literally. The double-decker buses can come right below electric wiring and trees. I guy I knew in Philadelphia got whacked so hard by a tree branch that he got a concussion. We need to make a documentary on this dangerous job that would be like that deadly snow crab-catching show on cable ("the deadliest tour").

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Ed Kaufman, tourguide of the stars

Ed Kaufman trained new tourguides at New York Apple Tours (since defunct, since they ran over too many old ladies). Ed had one of those guides to stars homes that is out of date as soon as it is released.
Nevertheless, Ed loved to point at buildings on Central Park West and tell you who lives there. (I cannot replicate his Queens accent on paper.) People would be left looking at the blank brick facades of the buildings.
The odd thing about living in New York is that you pass famous people on the streets fairly often. It is now hip to complain about the movie trucks blocking your street and taking all the parking.
It is true that Manhattan is used as a film location too often. Try Philly, for God's sake!
Philly has an elevated line, the Frankford El, which would prove a compelling location for a film noir-type flick. Most of the buildings upper stories are bricked-in or concreted-in on the shopping street atop which rest the el tracks.
There are a few with open windows. I try to imagine living there and invariably think of the Woody Allen film in which his family lives under a roller coaster in Coney Island.
Still, the top floors of those buildings would make a great location for either an illicit love scene or a murder, with the lights and the sound providing serious atmosphere.
So, filmmakers, try Philly. It even has alleys.

Jew Watch

It sounds like something Borat would come up with, but Jew Watch is a real web site. It purports to be "a scholarly resource" into Zionism. It attracted the ire of the Jewish community, since it comes immediately up when you simply punch "Jew" into Google. For their part Google has a disclaimer above it, saying that the site disturbs them, but it is a free speech issue.
The site is of course unintentially hilarious, with all the usual "conspiracies and lies" - like the Holocaust (didn't happen), the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and their secret plan to rule the earth, and of course that 9/11 was planned by Jews.
I'm putting up a "Swede Watch" site, in which I not only prove that the Vikings never existed, but the Minnesota Vikings football team doesn't exist, nor has it ever.
The "games" were all staged by Minnesota's famously liberal politicians to get more money for their wasteful social programs from the federal government, by making it seem like people actually live up there. Welfare recipients were hired to fill the Metrodome's seats, making the stadium appear full.
Jew Watch should be an East Coast version of Baywatch. It would be set in the 1970s, when Macy's and Gimbel's were still competing for the shopper's dollar. Specially-trained lifeguards would be positioned in high chairs in Herald Square. Whenever they saw someone about to pay full price, the guards would leap into action and "save" the him or her. They would then point the grateful shopper the way to a real bargain nearby.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Up against the Wall, 12-Letter Compound Expletive

What is it about a certain 12-letter compound expletive that is, or used be, strongly associated with the black lower class? I know this might seem silly to most people, but it is worth a half-ass exploration, motherfucker.
There have actually been books published that surmised that the word's popularity had something to do with actual reality in the South. So many of a servant's brothers and sisters had been conceived with a white landowner that they indeed were motherfuckers. Or so the explanation goes.
Of course, it is now used in so many ways that the genesis of the word is hard to come by (pun unintended). The word can be used as much in admiration (that's one bad-ass motherfucker) as in revulsion (that's one bad-ass motherfucker).
Let's take a look at the white landowner thesis. According to it, blacks under sharecropping were worse off than during slavery. At least a slaveowner had an interest in his slaves' physical health. The owner of a plantation had little; if one black sharecropper dies, another will quickly replace him. If the owner takes a sexual interest in the sharecropper's wife, she had better be compliant with his demands.
All of this undercover hanky-panky revealed itself in light-skinned babies. Who later became the black upper-class by virtue of their skin color. In and around New Orleans, the racial mixing bowl was further complicated by the Creoles, who were usually of French/Spanish and black background (though not always). In the end, though, the Southern standard of being a Negro or black or whatever was one drop. Meaning if you had one drop of black blood in you, you were black.
There was a time, of course, that the word motherfucker could still shock. Maybe it was at first a way of separating yourself from mainstream white culture and "signifying" a certain derision for it. That's how long-time Detroit Mayor Coleman Young used it, referring to even high state officials as motherfuckers. He was showing he was still real or down or whatever you want to call it.
I don't think Obama's going to start tossing the word around anytime soon. Hopefully, he'll come up with what this country really needs, which are new obscenities, since the old ones don't shock anyone anymore. Believe in change!

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Cum as you are

One of the last of Hollywood's taboos has come tumbling down, at least in terms of bodily fluids.
It started with the scene in "There's Something About Mary," in which Ben Stiller masturbated and couldn't find where "it" went. His date then looks at his ear and asks "is that hair gel? I could use some." She then takes the ejaculate and puts it into her hair. She's seen a bit later at a restaurant, with her bangs sticking up straight from her head.
Alright, the scene is pretty funny. But it opened the floodgates to imitation, and Hollywood is beating it (no pun intended) into the ground as usual, resulting in a desensitized public. What's next, projectile vomiting on each other?
I rented a dumb collegiate comedy (I don't recall the name) in which one of the main characters has refrained from release (by self or others) until his new girlfriend is in his room. She or he then helps him achieve such satisfaction to the point where his gentleman's relish flies across the girl's room and lands on one of her stuffed animals. His man mayo is followed across the room in slow-mo, like an Olympic performance.
Not bad, but when did come shots become R-rated materials, in fact and not in speech?
That's supposed to be the last redoubt of the X-rating.
Once again I am thrust into the odd role of the blue-nosed puritan, but not because I think the material is too graphic, but that some things should actually be considered graphic or people get quickly bored of them. With no forbidden fruits left, we will all starve. Where's the Catholic League of Decency when we need it?
The answer is of course, dead. Mike Myers new movie apparently contains gallons of goo jokes, none of them particularly funny.
Not to say I don't have a twisted sense of humor about these things. When I was 20, I worked at an ice cream place famous for its blend-ins. A blend-in meant that if you, say, ordered vanilla, you could select oreos or Reese's to blend in with a machine.
Lots of cute little 15 year olds patronized this place, and I thought a few times how I'd make them my own "special" blend-ins in a quick visit to the bathrooms ("mmm, it's so salty!") Like the ad used to say, "makes its own sauce."

Monday, July 14, 2008

Out with the old

The news coverage of Jesse Jackson's under-his-breath attacks on Obama, meant half-seriously or not, further illustrates that his generation of black leaders have got to go.
These are politicians that feel it is their god-given right to be consulted by the white media and politicians as "Professional Blacks." They are black for a living, with Sharpton of course the most obvious example. I can't help thinking of ex-Detroit Czar/Mayor-for-Life Coleman Young's quote that "Jesse don't want to run nothing but his mouth."
Being quoted for "the black opinion," is in fact a kind of racism. Did someone appoint Jackson et al. as world spokesmen for millions of black people? Yet it is the Jacksons of the world that are raising the question of whether Obama is really black, like he has to pass a test. Theirs.
We've seen what happens when Harlem was basically given as a fiefdom to a few politicians. When Charles Rangel (no matter his immense personal appeal) and company ran the Harlem redevelopment authority, guess how many large projects were built there? Zero. It was only when the authority was de facto dissolved that development started. The neighborhood was, as someone said about Detroit until Young stepped down, "a black plantation run by blacks."

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Role-Model-in-Chief?

What is wrong with inner-city black boys? Ever since the great migration to the north, one answer has been some variant of this: black men. They are absent fathers, are unmarriageable both because of their lack of earning power and wayward ways, and often violent and abusive toward the mothers of their children.
All of these answers are of course tied up in one tangled ball. If it could only be unraveled some way, black men could be what their children need: a positive male role model.
What role model could be more influential than President of the United States? Enter Barak Obama. A great tide of black boys, it is hoped, would want to be like him, rather than sports, music, or entertainment stars - or "gangstas."
Yet we already know that naming streets after black leaders certainly does nothing to curb ghetto violence. Washington, DC residents are already used to the constant carnage at the intersection of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X boulevards in the Anacostia section of the city.
One response is that these two great figures are already ancient history to today's youth: old guys in old black-and-white pictures wearing suits and ties. Obama is here and now.
But it is the lure of the here and now, sociologists have said, that differentiates the poor from the middle class. The middle class will defer immediate gratification for future reward, like graduating from school or getting the necessary training for jobs.
The reward of the drug trade is instantaneous, and requires little formal training or travel. With profit margins of about 300 percent, would impoverished boys really deny it for some nebulous promised future?
And it is the ever-present neighborhood, project, or street corner that is almost the definition of a ghetto. The president of the country is a lot less important than those who rule the gangs. It's hard to study in a free-fire zone. Any perceived lack of attention to clear and present danger could easily get you killed.
Middle-class black men clearly want to do something about the lure of "out there;" running the streets. In Philadelphia, these men turned out in the thousands to fill the Temple University arena. Their slogan called for "10,000 men" to do, well, something, like patrolling the neighborhoods as a kind of auxiliary police force. Months later, no one has signed up for anything, which the organizers blamed on lack of funds.
The terrible frustration that so many black men feel, as demonstrated in this and the Million Man March in 1995, is painfully evident. They haven't figured out what to do. Neither, really, has anyone else. Sen. Obama, your answer, please?

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Killing My Doppelganger

Fans and non-fans (playa hatas),

It seems there is a indie flimaker in Canada - Winnepeg, Calgery etc, who has my name, the bastard.
This wouldn't be such a pisser but that he's way above me in the Google Bowl. Punch in my name and the first entry on my part is a letter to the editor of the NY times about the 9/11 memorial. It's about a page and a half back so it's easy to ignore.
How did this guy pull so far ahead of me? Documentaries about moose mating? Ice fishing on Lake Ontario? I'm going to launch a KKK-type terror campagn to drive these northernerners, to become, well, even more northern.
I'm not exactly sure what these people do for entertainment. Tormenting Polar Bears? Seal beating? Seals are pretty easy to bag, since they are by and large peaceful animals, which helps when it comes to beating their brains in with a club.
Is this what passes for outrage in Canada? We need some good upright citizens to go up there and shoot up malls, schools, and government buildings.
God Bless America.

Buy me some pate de foie gras and crackerjack

Hello reader(s),

It was only a matter of time. The Mets announced that they would have shiny new expensive restaurants lining their "concourses,"(never just hallways)at the Citifield replacing Shea.
One is going to be the everybody-raves-about-it Shake Shack, oddly known for their burgers. The other will be run by celebrity restaranteur Danny Meyer. Meyer brought the Union Square area to hip life with Gramercy Tavern and other places I'm too poor and unhip to know about.
The trend toward expense-account food at the ballgame has been going on as long as these "retro" ballparks have been established (Camden Yards in the early 1990s). While these parks are a huge leap forward from the astroturf-lined multipurpuse (basball and football) concrete donuts that took over baseball in the early 1970s, they are really designed for one purpose: keeping your butt out of your seat and spending money at stores and restaurants on "concourses," which are difficult to tell from shopping malls.
In Philly, for example, there are concessions for cheesesteaks (no surprise here), but also for "crab fries," which are just like the regular item, except they have Old Bay seasoning all over them. The most interesting one (and I do recommend it to outsiders) is the Schmitter. The Schmitter is otherwise only served at one place in the city, right along the suburban line.
The Schmitter is possibly responsible for most of the heart atttacks on any given day. Let's just say that it is huge, and comes with a glutinous sauce that is guaranteed to clog your arteries in no time flat.
But back to NY. One thing the new stadia have is that the proletariat sits not only up high, but way back from the field. This is because people in luxury boxes do not want their views marred by overhanging decks. You can't even see a decent home run.
So the society becomes more stratified, as usual.
I'm trying to think of New York themed bars and restaurants, especially in the Bronx. You could of course get a knish (potato I hope). You could get giant pastrami sandwiches, courtesy of total ripoffs like the Carnegie. You could also get the last Italian pizzeria to give you something that doesn't taste like a cheese wheel.
The best NY option would be something like Danny Meyer. You could pay outrageous prices for tiny plates of nouvelle cuisine, with a bonus for snotty service.
So kids today, and tomorrow, can say they're going shopping. At Yankee Stadium and Citifield.