Monday, September 29, 2008

Everyday is Like Monday (Night Football)

Yes, it was an in ad for the NFL yesterday , and it is a song about Nuclear Armageddon. Morrisey's song "Everyday is Like Sunday." They just played that line over and over again on TV.
Mainly because the rest of the lyrics go "everyday is silent and gray," and "come Armageddon come Armageddon come."
Let's wait for the refrain for "God Save the Queen," to be played incessantly,in an incessant loop, without the accompanying lyrics to give it meaning.
This is like what's known in media as a "pull quote" for a movie. The film in a review could be something like "so horrible it sets a new standard for wretchedness" and the ads for it would be that it "sets a new standard."
And what do Englishmen know about football anyway?

PS. The Skins actually beat Dallas at their stadium. Is that a signal of the coming of the Antichrist?

Saturday, September 27, 2008

A Snail's Pace in a Horserace

CNN brought participatory democracy to an unexpected low when they constantly ran an asinine graph at the bottom of its screen during Friday's debate. The graph, if I have this correctly, was supposed to instantly measure the reaction to what the debaters were saying. It included, I think, only politically declared viewers, be they Republican, Democrats, or Independents.
What happened? Surprise! The candidate whose turn it was to talk always came out on top. When they would switch to the other party, "the lead" would switch as well.
Apparently running election coverage up to two years before the actual election is not good enough for the Horseracers. They need to know everything about viewers the very second one of the candidates opens (or closes) his mouth.
Political Scientists have long thought that truly participatory democracy ends up being the tyranny of the majority. What's up for the next debate, attaching sensors to viewers about who, in their gut feeling, is instantly right or wrong? It just becomes a measure of visceral reaction, completely undermining what is meant by a well-informed electorate.
OK, The graph was excruciatingly dull and slow. Hopefully it stays that way and drops from the bottom of the screen into the dustbin of media history. I'm attached to sensors too much already.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Backwards into the Future

They put his baseball hat on backwards to make him look stupid. The kid was a little slow mentally, and the others in his high school hangout-gang thought the look fitting.

The scenes are from "The Last Picture Show" (early 1970s). And it was right about one thing. Wearing a cap in general looks stupid, especially backwards, or, as it now seems, too big and cocked to one side. That looks like someone put a saucepot on your head and forgot about it

Tony Soprano at least had some taste. Dining out at a mid-to-high level NJ restaurant, Tony is bothered by a guy at the next table wearing a baseball cap. He comes over and says, "excuse me, I don't see any bleachers in here."

The guy initially protests, and says that no one tells him what he can wear anywhere. Tony stands next to him, without a word and with a small smile on his face. The guy takes off his cap.

My almost-80-year old father liked that, as well as anything against the relentless slobbification of America.

All I can say is guilty. I don't have one single suit. Otherwise, there is one courderoy academic guy jacket, and crappy neckties I bought on the street in NY.

I call any group of guys all sporting the cap fashion Duckheads. They look like Ducks or Geese, all in a gaggle of bills going front, back, sideways and noways.

This is all valid if you are actually working in a job that shoots burning rays into your face, like construction.

Otherwise, it is what a friend called, "The Village Idiot Look." The producers of "The Last Picture Show" would agree.

As a Known Enemy

"Definitely, Maybe," a mid-level romantic comedy came across the screen last night. It detailed the life of a guy who came to New York for the Clinton campaign in 1992. He now has a 10-year-old daughter who asks him one night to tell her about his past, mostly his romantic relationships.
A running joke in the movie is that the character, a political nerd, has never heard of Kurt Cobain. Finally, he hears "Come as You Are," and relates, sort of.
Will this be the first of Nirvana's songs to become a commercial jingle? There is still a fight between Courtney Love and the members of Nirvana as to who owns Kurt's songs. I did notice that no Nirvana song was actually played.
It seems inevitable, but then again the Beatles never really sold their catalog, not yet at least(hear me Micheal Jackson).
In a way, that's too bad. I want to play Strawberry Fields on guitar for my five-year-old niece. It's the kind of thing you settle for by being unattached.

A Wall of Words

I am constructing a wall of words. Keep out until it's done. No one is allowed behind the steel curtain.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Two versions of the same thing (my mistake):

Throwaway Youth, (A New Year's Eve)

My father threw out the photo album containing my and others youth when I was away, aah, "vacationing," at Silver Hill Hospital. It wasn't deliberate; the book was stored with a lot of junk at Moishe's storage in Queens, so out it went too.
The most important photos in there were of a New Year's Eve at Vicky Rappaport's house in DC in the horrible Reagan Youth mid-1980s. I was a sophomore in college, which would make it the turn of 85-86. I knew that that night was going to be the last time I would see most of these people together, or at all. So I did some photojournalism of the night.
Now I can only describe what I remember of the pictures, in words before I lose the memory:
John Huddle holding a half-eaten Fudgesickle at his house on Rittenhouse Street
Me with longish hair holding out two Milwaukee's Best in the living room. I am wearing a dark blue T-shirt with the name "Hudson Explorers" on it. I had stolen it from my college roommate, Jeff Mack.
Robin Kreisberg outside Circle Liquors, posing as being comically confused at the cheap champagne bottle he had just bought.
Scott Wilkerson smiling broadly, leaning forward from the back set in the car going to the party. Naturally, he is holding a can of Best.
A wide shot showing partiers in the kitchen at Vicky's. Scott McLeod is in the forefront, with hair dyed blond on top. Keith Campbell is looking nonchalantly towards the camera. There is also some guy in glasses named Paul something. There are way too many guys in the photo, though I don't remember it being a sausage fest.
Jeff "Swaz" Dlimini wearing a wide-striped blue and black sweater. He had a kind of boxy haircut, making him look the part of the African. Kenny Kiron, looking swarthy but without a beard, is standing next to him. He is wearing a black and white flannel-type shirt open over a white T-shirt.
Joe Flint, in a close-up, is looking up and out at the camera, his face in a a transparent plastic kegger beer cup. His hair is dyed orangy on top, and is wearing a Ramones-type black leather jacket (he wins the fashion award for the night).
Martin Yancy, in a pink polo shirt, of course. From the pictures, it looks like maybe a quarter or a little less of the crowd is black.

I don't think I took any direct shots of girls for the album. This is part of why my brother Paul said of my friends "those guys don't really like girls." Not meaning that we were gay, but didn't really like them hanging around us. Remember, we were the Brewski Brothers (emphasis on last word).
Most people have a group or gang that they hung around with when young. What was so good for a certain period of time was that ours was extraordinarily friendly and good-natured for the most part. I remember driving down from Jersey to Tulane at the start of sophomore year. Me and my Tulane friend Tony Rotelli stopped in DC for a party in Upper Northwest somewhere. He was welcomed by everyone of "the brothers" and others.
Afterwards, I asked him if he liked my friends. "How could anyone not like those guys?" he said.
Now if I could only get the girlfriend photos somehow (mostly Erin A. and Lynne Bowers).
Didn't Billy Bragg sing of middle-class England " where nostalgia is the opium of the masses?" Wait, that album was from the 80s. This is nostalgia over nostalgia.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

New Year's Eve (Photo Version)

My father had my photos thrown away when I was in the Cukoo's Nest. They were sitting there in a Moishe's storage room in Queens. It wasn't deliberate. But the photos I took for that photo album I knew could never be recreated.
The party was at Vicky Rappoport's New Year's Eve party in the mid-1980s. I knew I would probably never or hardly ever see any of these people. I was either a freshman or sophomore in college.
I have to describe what I remember, or else the memories will fade.
Here's the photo album, in words.

John Huddle, in his father's living room on Rittenhouse. Huddle is eating a fudge popsicle (hey, no wise comments on that).
Robin Kreisberg, looking quizzically at a bottle of the cheap champagne he had just bought outside Circle Liquor in Chevy Chase DC.
Scott Wilkerson laughing, in a car going to the party, with a Milwaukee's Best can next to his face.
A crowd shot in Vicky's kitchen, with too many guys and not enough girls. Scott McLeod is looking at the camera, with his hair tinted a Sting-like blond. Some of the heads in the photo are black, so at least it was an integrated gig.
Jeff "Swaz" Dlemini in a blue and black sweater, with a boxy haircut that makes him look authentically African.
The other identifiable black guy, Martin Yancey, in a pink polo shirt, in a different shot. I think Kenny Kiron, looking hirsute, was in this shot too. If not, he was in another shot.
Joe Flint, with his face buried in a transparent beer cup. He is wearing a black Ramones-style jacket. His hair is wanna-be orange on top, not quite there.
Another crowd shot in the kitchen, this one with Keith Campbell in it, but just Huddle otherwise identifiable.

In retrospect, what was remarkable in the photos was a lack of girls. Now I know they were there, but my prejudices came through. I wanted shots of the Brewski Brothers in action.
It's like my brother (older) said. "Those guys don't like girls." Not meaning sexually, but that the Brothership admitted no females. Jesus, it was the Hoog who poured a beer over my head to christen me.

But like I said, I knew. This group would never be together all as one as in a long time, probably never.
Driving down to Tulane for Sophomore year with a college friend to go to the beginning of the semester, me and my college buddy Anthony Rotelli stopped in DC for a party before leaving again.
After the party was over, I asked him how he liked my friends. "How could anybody not like those guys?" he said. Kreisberg would be proud.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Chuck it, Tourguide

I just chucked it. Threw up, booted, ralphed, heaved, did the technicolor yawn, prayed to the porcelain god etc.
It would seem to be a personal moment, but barfing and depictions thereof become a serious court case at Wisconsin the year after I left.
It seems that the new chancellor, the inimitable Donna Shalala, did not like the depictions of the university mascot being displayed and shown on State St., the street that connected the state capitol and the campus.
My personal favorite showed Bucky Badger spewing chunks all over the place. The legend below was "we ain't leavin' till we're heavin'."
Then there was the straight-ahead "fuck 'em, Bucky." This showed the perpetually scowling face of the the Buckmeister with his middle finger raised to the observer.
Who cares about a few cheesy (get it) T-shirt shops on the street leading to the campus? My friends and I thought it was funny because it showed such a total lack of class and pride, two traits we detested.
Donna didn't see it this way, and sued the stores. Not on freedom of speech, but on copyright infringement. And she won! (This is probably why Clinton hired her).
But think again. Have you ever seen a USC Trojan actually projectile vomit? They're too busy fitting into wallets of kids that never get laid. For shame!

David Foster Wallace RIP

"Infinite Jest" it was called, and infinite is what it seemed. Filled with asides and footnotes, I swore I would never write a book so indulgent and in serious need of a serious editor.
Foster Wallace died at 46 about a week ago by hanging himself. Like Kurt Cobain, he left a good-looking corpse, with luxuriant long hair hanging in his face in most shots.
His death left the literary world twisting in its own hypocrisies Wallace's book sales will most certainly skyrocket, at least for a while.
One is immediately reminded of Chuck Klosterman's book "Killing Yourself to Live," which is about rock and roll, but can be applied to almost any creative endeavor.
On the face of it, "Infinite Jest (1996)," is unreadable. It did not put you into that trance-like state that good writing normally does. Instead, it is full of reminders to other things. The restless postmodern world, where concentration is impossible, and the more asides one has, the wiser and more thoughtful.
Lift a glass to the creative process, and scream.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Hope (Despite the Times)

What would an Obama presidency mean to the ghetto poor? Would teenage dealers suddenly drop their weapons and apply en mass to Harvard Law? Would the lure of making serious money just outside your door be dumped in favor of serious deferred gratification?
I doubted it too. But in the Philadelphia neighborhood (black and Puerto Rican) where my cousin has taught, one thing at least happens.
Academic achievement, while never cool, may at least seen in a better light with Obama. We need to get to the point where scholastic efforts are respected by kids, and are not seen as "acting white."
It's difficult to ask Obama to carry history's burden. He might be seen as neglecting whites (Oh God help us). We've been looking at myriad problems of the ghetto since blacks moved from farm to factory in the 1940s-1980s. No one has come up with a magic wand to solve them.
But maybe one black man's presence at the top can mean a start, a start to the end of all that.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Extreme Irratation

Have to respond to The Rambler's pox on the term "extreme." Just to set the record straight, I bought a tube of Crest marked "Extreme." Upon finishing my brushing I fashioned my own Bungee cord out of old clothes and rubber tires and jumped into the Grand Canyon, climbed a skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur, and skydived out of a satellite reached by a hang glider.
I can't wait for Ultimate Extreme.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Bukowski, the Ultimate Aphrodisiac

I never used to believe those letters in Penthouse Forum. Until one day, something incredible happened to me. Walking across campus back in college, tattered volume of Bukowski in my back pocket, I was stopped in my tracks by the most beautiful girl in my English class.
"You like Bukowski?" she said. I nervously said that I did.
Suddenly she let out a low moan and closed her eyes in ecstasy. Then she ran her tongue along her lush lips. I thought she might be coming right there. "Bukkie makes me so hot. Come back to my dorm with me, right now."
Our lovemaking was intense, what with my shouting out verses and lines, as she squealed with delight. Then she made me cover my face with a Bukowski poster on her wall.
Afterwards,we shared a bottle of something. She finally passed out just like her literary hero.
I walked back across campus on a cloud. I told my roomates about it, but they just called me a total bullshitter. I resolved to meet her someplace so that they could see that she dug my badass rebel intellectul stance.
Finally, I saw her in a cafe. My roommates went in with me.
Overnight, it seems, she had forgotten about me. She was cold and uninterested. "What about all we had," I said? "What about my "Bukowski Comes Alive" album?
"Oh yeah," she said with a bored expression. "I've moved on to John Grisham."

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Ratso Rizzo Doesn't Live Here Anymore

We might as well has had targets on our clothes. Three suburban teenagers just off the Port Authority bus from Princeton.
As soon as we hit the street, the incantations started. "Smoke, ID, switchblade," they said as we passed by. Finally, a Ratso Rizzo type pulls us aside and said he could make the best fake ID's around.
We stopped in front of a porn theater on 8th Avenue. Ratso dissapears into the building. He comes back and says, "everything is cool. You just need to give me twenty each (The rough equilalent of fifty now)."
Even we weren't that stupid. We rejected his offer, then he asked us who we thought we were fucking with. We said we didn't know.
"You're fucking with the Mafia, man," he said. Even we knew that no one goes around talking about how he was in the Mafia.
We ditched Ratso and walked along the Deuce, 42nd between Seventh and Eighth ave. The guys approaching us became funny to us. Until one time a black man of a large build responded to our laughing.
He went up to Will, the most demonstrative, and said to him, "you a wise-ass motherfucker. I should get my boys on you."
At this point we gave up on quality fake ID's and went to Playland, an amusement parlor in the heart of the square. They simply asked how old we'd like to be, then gave us these absurd "college" ID's. I think mine was from North Central Southern Baptist College of the Holy Angels.
I tried that ID once, in DC, and the liquor store manager gave me a sincere "I'm sorry" look. Hey, I was a student in one of the most prestigious fake institutions in the country.

The best part of 42nd Street's clean-up was when they shut the porn theatres down, and replaced their street signs with odd bits of haiku and poetry on the marquees.
Scum couldn't figure out the street's new avant garde artistic direction, and largely went elsewhere.
I kind of wish they would have kept the poetry. Very New York. But commerce marches on.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Worse than Godzilla?

Remembering a National Geographic from the 1980s. An article on New York. A photo of Japanese tourists peering out from behind a glass wall, with expressions of awe and fear at the spectacle of Times Square.
The caption explained that the tourists were safely behind glass, because the Japanese were "unaccustomed to urban crime" in their country.
The city has now expanded the sidewalks and the areas in the middle of the square because so many tourists now encroach on the street. They pose for pictures there, which is good because it gets them out of the way of others not lurching along like elephants.
For me, and many others, the area is now basically a blank space given over to tourists. When thinking of a decent bar or restaurant, the mind passes right over the square, until you hit the gastronomic (and generally cheap) jackpot of multi-ethnic food on Ninth Avenue.
When I was a tour guide, unless asked I would generally not tell the tourists about how you could travel over a block from 8th Ave. and easily find a decently priced and flavorful restaurant. The city needs the suckers to patronize the bullshit theme places. Good for the economy.

"The Rotting of the Big Apple"

It was these words that were splashed all over the front cover of Time magazine in the late summer of 1990. Brian Watkins, a twentysomething tourist from Utah, was with his family on a 7th Ave. subway station when a gang set upon his mother. Like any other son, he tried to defend her. For this, he was stabbed fatally in the chest.
It marked a nadir for the city's self-image and its reality. Murders were peaking in the crack wars, and public spaces had been taken over by the homeless and illegal and illicit activity. Bryant Park was impassible for most, and it was hidden from the street by high hedges and walls.
That's why the most impressive things to happen in the past 20 years has been the reclamation of parks and public places in general.
Last week, having been semi-stood up at a bar in Flatiron (The Olde Town), I encountered a beautiful evening in August.
I had walked from Washington Square Park, three-quarters of which are under a renovation. Union Square was redoing the northern half of the park. Madison Square featured a huge line to the improbably hip Shake Shack in it.
Bryant Park is now a great public space, having taken the playbook for great spaces from the urbanist William Whyte and applied them - movable chairs, concessions, a running fountain, and a well-patronized restaurant and bar at the base of the library.
It was dark by this time, yet no one seemed afraid. Instead, it felt like a European public space.
The biggest fight, of course, was Tompkins Square Park. In the late 80s it had been the scene of rioting between police and occupants of the park that did not observe the new closing hours.
I must admit I felt like a badass just going there in college, what with the self-styled anarchists and punkers and the like. I used to freely drink there and get in loud, drunken political arguments with a friend. At about 2 or 3 in the morning.
Later, in Guiliani's crackdown, I literally got caught with my pants down pissing in the bushes. The cops let me off with a warning, instead of an enforced $50 ticket.
So Tompkins Square is now more a sunning spot than a hotbed of dissent. The only rotting going on in the Big Apple now is in unsold super-luxury condos.
But I always felt that there should be a discreet memorial where Brian Watkins breathed his last while defending his mother. Far away in Utah, there probably is.

Monday, September 1, 2008

A River Drowned

The names of the places where the civil rights movement in Alabama mounted anti-segregation protests, to the point where sometimes it meant death, have become standard High School history in this country: Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham.
Yet the northern Alabama hill country where I stayed there is little of this haunted period in evidence. Instead, they drowned a river.
The Tennessee Valley Authority blocked up the Tennessee River with dams to provide electricity to areas so poor people lived in unlighted shacks. Now the river is split into artificial lakes. On the weekends they are filled with people jet-skiing, boating, and catching Bass.
Wealth has come to the South. No surprise there. The lake houses stand empty most of the time, as Huntsville, 20 miles away, has prospered after the US rocket program was stationed there. There is a huge tower that was used somehow in launching the Saturn spacecraft.
The only reminder of segregation is the courthouse square in the center of Scottsboro. Like most other towns of its size, the square is practically empty most of the time, the commerce having spread out to the highways.
The Scottsboro Boys case was initially tried there. This was a series of trials of black young men that were accused of raping two white women. This was aboard a boxcar, yet somehow the conducter was summoned by some white youths that had been beaten up by the black men.
There was a lynch mob already forming in the next town. The governor of the state calmed them down by saying, essentially, let the state kill the boys (the penalty for rape of a white woman was death).
The case went on and on in the 1930s into the 1940s when, incredibly (with the behind the scenes aid of a New York Jewish lawyer), everyone was found innocent.
But look around today, there are not many blacks around, there in the heart of Dixie. The hill folk had little interest in defending the plantation owners to the south in a civil war. They had no slaves. Now the best evidence that you are in the rural South is the number of structures that are some kind of church (Christian, of course. Even Papists are suspicious).
On the up side, you can buy alcohol and guns at Wal-Mart, in one easy trip. And if traveling through nearby Ft. Payne, you must stop and pose with the larger-than-life statues of the 1970s country band Alabama.

Those of you who know Chris, he seems to be getting into the lifestyle there. We shot air rifles at cans, and went bass fishing a lot (Chris eventually caught a two-and-a-half pound one, which put up a hell of a fight). His mother is living with her (second? third?) husband.
In a scene out of Vonnegut, me, Chris, and his mother drove up this heavily wooded small mountain in Huntsville. At the top was a "golf community." This means that the houses are right by the painstakingly maintained immaculate course.
We had lunch at the hill-top mountain clubhouse, looking down at the sprawl of Huntsville. Peasants.