24 February 2009
Smoking a short and talented cigar and listening to Dylan's "Mozambique". She left me a love note on a sliver of graph paper inside one my sterling silver repoussé cigar cases. I opened it up and it exploded. "One more cup of coffee before I go". A quarter got you a handful of chocolate covered coffee beans at the old magazine stand on Saint Marks. I remember the way the wood groaned as we browsed. A handful of cheap gold looks like Hanukkah gelt. More coffee and rye toast. My throat burns like seltzer in the middle of the night. I remember the sweet summer clamor of ice cubes in coffee and plastic covered furniture on 17th Street. Yankees on WPIX and Phil Rizzuto "Holy Cow" on a giant oak furniture television. Now I'm thirty years old upstairs at one of my favorite restaurants and she has all my friends waiting to surprise me. I used to stand behind my grandfather and pretend I was a train conductor. I'd call out the stops on the Double R. "Union Street, 9th Street is next"... "Prospect Avenue, 25th Street next, stand clear of the closing doors." It's New Years Eve in a snowstorm and I'm laying on my back in the hospital where I was born and I can't breathe. Watching Jack and Jill chase each other up an old tree like a barber pole. When we landed in Adelaide the air smelled fresh and sweet like eucalyptus and honey. "He pushed the table over to protect his family Then he staggered out into the streets of Little Italy."
Read More23 February 2009
Mailbox Cleaning
Came across this email I'd sent to a local spa inquiring about a massage. Bless their hearts for answering me so professionally.
From: GCI
To: local spa
Sent: Sun, 8 Jun 2008 8:09 am
Subject: re: deep tissue
i'm a big guy
will the deep tissue crack my back nice?
i like a good crack. i want to feel like a jellyfish when i leave.
i wish to be sans exoskeleton.
i want it to sound like a car rolling over driveway gravel when i'm getting the massage.
can you make this happen?
22 February 2009
I Can't Believe My Channel 4 Hired Jeff Rossen
Didn't anyone else see how full of shit he was in Bowling for Columbine?!
20 February 2009
18 February 2009
Smoked the last of the Peter Jacksons by the time I made it to 1750 Vine. She said to meet her by Marilyn's star. Outside the McDonalds on Hollywood. Backpack full of used books without the covers. A modern day hobo's bindle. Those long winding roads leading up to Griffith Park. In the back of the van reading an old Daily Breeze while spiraling down Vermont Canyon Road like a gumball in a funnel. She was a penny in a wishing well. I was a fountain in an empty shopping mall. Meet me underneath the astronomical clock in Prague where Gothic cathedrals soar behind Romanesque churches and Art Nouveau is hand-in-glove with Cubism. Just then I woke up to a snowstorm in Keystone, South Dakota. I rubbed my eyes, rolled my neck, hit pause on my discman and sleptwalked into the gas station snack shop where I bought myself a large hot chocolate.
Read MoreI never bought into the mystical story Jim Morrison used to tell about driving with his family as a kid through New Mexico though I am reminded of it now.
My boy Jim used to say that when he was 4 years old, somewhere between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, he and his family came upon the aftermath of an awful car accident: a group of Indians were lying on the road, bleeding to death. And from that day on Jim said he'd always believed that the spirit of an Indian, a shaman, had entered his own soul as he passed by the scene as a young boy.
The more I read and hear about this chimpanzee story the worse my stomach ache gets. It's just so fucking sad and I feel like the spirit of this chimp has entered my soul and the soul of animal lovers everywhere...
The 911 call with Sandra Herold is just so fucking disturbing. Theres no other way to describe it. And the fact that she had to stab him with a butcher knife and pound him with a shovel to stop his rampage...
Then the cops showed up and they had to shoot this poor animal who then apparently turned around, full of bullet holes, and somehow sauntered back inside the house, went to his favorite spot and died.
But the worst part was her saying that after she stabbed he turned around and looked at her as if to say 'Mom, why did you do that to me?'... it just fills me with so much fucking sadness. I don't know what else to say except that I love animals and this is a horrible, tragic story.
R.I.P. angel
Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp Isn't Happy
OK, so The Post is being accused of racism due to a cartoon they ran today which compared the Obama administration to that of a mad chimpanzee.
In the cartoon, drawn by Sean Delonas, a regular Post cartoonist, two officers are staring gloomily at the blood spattered chimp's corpse after one of them has shot it. Linking two current news stories – controversy over Obama's economic stimulus proposals and Connecticut cops having to shoot dead a celeb pet chimp that went berserk and mauled a woman.
"They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," says the other officer.
Naturally, the cartoon drew immediate criticism from the famous layabout, race baiting Al Sharpton.
In a statement, Sharpton said the cartoon was "troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys".
Synonymous?! Speak for yourself, Al. Blacks are not synonymous with monkeys. I never said that, I don't think that, the cartoon didn't make me think that and so do me a favor and don't put words in my mouth.
This is yet another case of racism in the mind of the beholder. I saw the cartoon and thought to myself the Post was implying the stimulus bill had been written by a bunch of chimps as in a zoo full of laughing, jumping, crazy monkeys. I never thought the chimp was actually supposed to be Barack Obama!
Come on, people. Racism continues to exist because of self-fulfilling shit like this.
I am not claiming self-righteousness. I'm not above off-color humor or bad jokes but I don't think I'm alone when I say I never even thought that way about the cartoon until I heard the news story and heard Sharpton screaming about it and I think THAT is the real issue here.
17 February 2009
The Priest and The Trans-Am
I was doing odd jobs at the time. $50 here for them to run some tests on me, $25 there for answering some questions about this or that. I was walking dogs, collecting cans, changing hard to reach light bulbs, fixing clogged drains, painting rooms for rent, whatever I could. Used to love to catch a corporate breeze from the banks and their devil-may-care igloo air conditioning in the dead of July. I'd just stand outside while people went in and out of the automatic doors. I had names and numbers written all over the palms on my hands and my arms. Felt like that guy in that movie. I was still waiting on a big payday from a remix I'd done of Petula Clark's "Downtown" for a soundtrack that never came out. I was hoping I'd run into Tony Hatch. Figured I could get him to advance me my share. Lord knows I needed it. I was grubbing instant coffee from Father Martinez in a storefront church off Luquer Street trying to stuff as many packs of sugar into my jacket pockets as I could before he turned around. I was getting tired of giving my soul to Jesus every Tuesday morning just for a few cheap styrofoam cups of lukewarm Folgers but I had to check in on the good Father. He was a bad ass priest. That was his thing. Tried to get guys like me to convert. And we did but only because we were hungry and cold. He'd tell us stories about flying P-51 Mustang's in WW2. He was cool. Just lonely. Anyway, I'd stashed a bag of diamonds inside the antifreeze overflow container of his metallic brown 1977 Trans Am that he kept up at his old house in Marble Hill but I knew that was for emergencies only and for as bad as this was I knew it could and probably would get a lot worse. Somehow I had that reasoning despite it all. I knew all the Father did was wax that thing. He never drove it. It still smelled like Pontiac factory leather and rubber. Regardless it wasn't as easy as one may think to cash in a few hundred thousand in diamonds when you looked as rough as I did covered in white house paint and dirt. The jewelers wouldn't even buzz me inside around my way and I'd burned all my bridges on 47th street so I was stuck. Had enough money to get me out of this mess but it in the wrong currency. I needed cash and all I had was stones. I crashed hard that night on the stairs of the Mexican restaurant next to the church. Woke up to someone saying something about a stolen Trans Am and a missing priest. And in a way, I guess that's how it all started.
16 February 2009
(in)Imitable Rivalries
I've always been fascinated by the Fats Domino / Chubby Checker thing. Forever linked by reciprocal animosity and resemblance not unlike the Hatfields & McCoys. Rangers vs. Islanders. Worse than the great cricket rivalry of India vs. Pakistan. Worse than Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, Popeye vs. Brutus, The Montagues and Capulets, Tupac and Biggie, Yankees / Red Sox, Beatles / Stones, there's Vienna Fingers / Cameo. The silent war. While we sleep, they battle on the shelves of your local supermarché.
Nabisco and Keebler go at it with their own versions of oval, vanilla creme filled cookies. The cookies are practically identical. But who came first? Who's Fats Domino and who's Chubby Checker? What came first the chicken or the egg, Keebler's Vienna Finger or Nabisco's Cameo?
It's the same god damned cookie!
This made me think of some other junk food rivalries & copycats. Namely the unforgiving chocolate wars of the Swiss Alps.
Somewhere along the way chocolate cake tubes and Switzerland became synonymous. Three different brands battle it out: Hostess weighs in with their HoHo's, Drakes checks in with Yodels and Little Debbie clocks in with the shameless Swiss Rolls. All of them named after some sort of play on words about Alpine folk music. Anyone dare explain this to me?
I must give nod to a great site I stumbled upon called "Second Rate Snacks". They uncover some other famous sugary battles (Oreo vs. Hydrox, Cheez-It vs. Cheese Nip, Sunkist vs. Crush) and a few which never occured to me (Mounds vs. Bounty, Heath vs. Skor)
D.L. Hughley's Eyes
"What it takes to make a pro blushCan someone tell me if this D.L. Hughley had some sort of eye surgery? His eyes freak me out but I can swear his eyes didn't always look so strange. I can't put my finger on what it is... Maybe some sort of LASIK surgery or eye-lift or something? Someone help!
All the boys think she's a spy
She's got D.L. Hughley's Eyes"
Read More
09 February 2009
Barack soundboard
“You know that guy ain’t shit. Sorry-ass motherfucker ain’t got nothing on me.”
“This shit’s getting way too complicated for me.”
“There are white folks, and then there are ignorant motherfuckers like you.”
“You ain’t my bitch, nigga! Buy your own damn fries!”
“Sure you can have my number, baby!”
“Blam!”
05 February 2009
Stock Broker Mercilessly Mocked, Labeled "a Homo" and Fired For Not Eating Meat
My man Dan clued me in to this one... BEEF AT GAY INSULT: VEGETARIAN SUES
Basically a Forex trader at Credit Agricole/Calyon is suing his boss for calling him a "homo" because he's a vegetarian. Dude said his boss "did everything he could to make him uncomfortable - including only ordering hamburgers and pepperoni and sausage pizzas for the weekly team lunches." Yeah, welcome to Wall Street, kid.
I've been either a vegetarian or vegan since I was 16. I'm now 30. And I have never bitched about it. It's a personal choice and it ends there. There are those who wear it like a badge and feel the need to let everyone in the room know. Then there are those who realize its a personal choice and, for better or for worse, they are in the minority. Especially in a place like Wall Street where Type-A's rule.
Granted not everyone has the same tolerance level. I've had roommates who ate meat and sure at times it grossed me out. But when you walk onto the trading floor you need to realize its a different world. Thick skin is a must and if you're gonna sue a firm because your desk partners busted your balls because you'd only eat iceberg wedges while they were eating lobsters and steaks, well maybe you're in the wrong business. And this is coming from a guy with "Meat is Murder" tattooed on the back of his neck.
The herbivore is suing Calyon for unspecified "compensatory, emotional, physical and punitive damages" after he was fired for an unrelated "minor infraction".
I've touched on this issue before. See here: Confessions of a Vegetarian Banker
02 February 2009
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