Alex Chilton died of a heart attack today, at a too-young 59 years of age. While it’s sad, it’s not too surprising. I’d already written an obit about him five years ago, when he went missing in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
I still never travel far without a little Big Star.
It turns out maintaining a blog while taking on increasing responsibilities at work and trying to finish my Masters degree and trying to maintain some semblance of a personal life is a bit tricky. Plus, I think Facebook statuses suck up an alarming amount of my wit (or potential wit). But before I throw in the towel and start a Twitter, I’m going to try my hand at one of those lazy Larry King round-ups of commentary, reviews and “observations.” (Actually, I’ve never really seen a full installment of Mr. Suspenders’ program, so I’m really just aping those even lazier parodic send-ups of Larry King.) Either these are placeholders for bigger, better posts or else they are the aborted remains of very promising ideas.
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There’s a certain poignancy in that moment of steeling oneself at the front door for a charging dog who will never again slam his 90 pound body into your knees. Or how a leash, brush and bowl in a plastic supermarket bag can require the same negotiation as a chest full of heirloom jewels at the reading of a will. And when does dropping little bits of food on the ground cease being nice, and start being rude?
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Upon third listening, the new Spoon record (a sleeper, like all others before it) sounds like a new, incredible advance. Like many of “Transference’s” reviewers, I’m attracted by the idea of Britt Daniel & Co. fully embracing the bombast that they have spent four successive records stripping to the bone. But the more that the band breaks down their songs to the most spare and elemental, the more I enjoy following them on their journey. I’m ready for their next record, comprising the sounds of Daniels’ pencil scratching paper while Jim Eno tunes his snare.
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How hard is it to find a good coffee table?! I realize that furniture is particularly subjective to taste (and there are few people more particular than me), but sheesh. If it’s not one thing, it’s the color. Black, for the record, is not tobacco, not coffee and certainly not mahogany. It seems like everything out there alternates between the extremely baroque or the post-post-modern. Gahd forbid you want to protect the wood finish with a little bit of glass. Oh, no. If you want a glass-top coffee table, the glass will be held aloft by skinny angular metal, positive vibes and pixie dust.
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Having as many obituaries on my site as I do, I’ve grown accustomed to estranged friends of the deceased learning the bad news by stumbling upon my blarg via Gooooooogle searches. It is somewhat dispiriting to see how long it can take before a good college buddy, former comrade or ex-girlfriend decides to investigate a bounced email or missing Christmas card. The responses to one particular comrade’s death (no names, comrades) are notable for their extreme sadness and their extreme tardiness. Did he make deep, profound connections with his friends and then retreat into his own private world? Am I doomed to do the same?
I’m reminded of the outlaw country singer / mystery writer Kinky Friedman, who writes of his shared fear of dying in his apartment and being devoured by his hungry cat before anyone notices. In his novels, Kinky writes of the “M.I.T. System.” The idea is quite simple. “M.I.T.” stands for Man In Trouble, and the point is to establish a reciprocal understanding with a friend that every few days each will call the other and say nothing more than, “M.I.T., M.I.T., M.I.T.” (Because, really, who wants to force small talk every two or three days?) If you don’t receive an “M.I.T.” call from your friend after three days, convince his Super to let you into the apartment to search for his half-eaten corpse and lay some kibble out for the ravenous cat.
I’ve made “M.I.T.” arrangements with a handful of friends over the years and, come to think of it, I have not received a “M.I.T.” call from any of them, nor they from I, in a long while. Better start Goooooogling.
Presented without commentary:
big rats
selective service letter
allen sessoms
gastonia strike,1929
“mary loritz”
red strawberry shoelace licorice
umass ula program
red scare political cartoon
shaun richman
finska black licorice
“federation of union representatives”
old fashioned licorice laces not twirler
cat abortificant
“shaun richman” jew
shaun richman aft national staff
Socialism truly is a dying religion. Tonight, I’m lighting some red candles for some wonderful comrades who have passed on this year. Yesterday, I learned that Ruth Greenberg-Edelstein passed away on November 24th. Ruth was a stalwart of the Socialist Party in upstate New York. On the National Committee, she was an effective advocate for feminist process and gender balance. A retired faculty member at both SUNY and Rutgers, she had, more or less, left active service on the National Committee by the time I got on there – although she had clearly left her stamp. I remember her as a friendly and vivacious backbencher who genuinely enjoyed the company of her comrades – especially the younger ones. Herself, she seemed much younger than she must have actually been, which is why her death comes as such a shock.
Her death follows so closely that of her husband J. David Edelstein, who passed away this July. His death was – forgive me – slightly less of a shock. Retired from Syracuse University for goodness knows how long, he was 90 years old and physically frail. Mentally – and ideologically – he was sharp as ever, and firm and determined in his convictions. Maddeningly so, from my perspective as a teenage socialist. How could such a good Marxist reject our Socialist Party Presidential campaigns in favor of the Greens? In retrospect, I came to see the logic of his argument, but at the time I got hot and bothered in our debates, and out of line, while he remained calm and civil. Fortunately, I was able to apologize while it still mattered. He remained a calm presence and a beacon of sorts. Looking through my inbox, I found a four-year-old email from Dave, gently admonishing me for an irreverent (and highly controversial!) cover from my two-issue stint as editor of “The Socialist” magazine while firmly standing in favor of my continued tenure as editor.
Finally, the most upsetting passing of the year was of Robert W. Tucker. Rob was my favorite old man in the party. A Quaker pacifist and expert on socialized medicine, he had become a lovable curmudgeon by the time I joined the party. For example, Rob had used his (slight) loss in hearing to make a mockery out of Robert’s Rules. I remember a young comrade from Boston rising to make a speech during a convention, and Rob (LOUDLY) whispering to his brother beside him “HE’S THE BEST ONE WE HAVE IN THAT STATE – GOD HELP US!!!” Kinda took the wind out of the sails of the young man’s speech.
In the true spirit of socialism, Rob would share his talent for LOUDLY whispering by acting as an amplifier for your private asides, as when the same young comrade from Boston took a shot at our YPSL National Secretary who was running for Vice Chair of the Party by questioning if the duties of both offices weren’t too overwhelming. “Well, I did them both at the same time,” I whispered to Rob. “YEAH, SHAUN DID THEM BOTH,” Rob shouted to the convention hall. No one ruled him out of order.
It was a bit of a kick in the guts to see see Rob quoted in Maurice Isserman’s biography of Michael Harrington, which I’ve been working my way through since before I learned of Rob’s passing. In it, Rob tells of Harrington’s tendency to date skinny minnie model-types who would sit – wearing their brand new leopard-skin pillbox hats – in the back of whatever hall Mike had dragged them to while he carried on with speeches and parliamentary maneuvers. Isserman does not publish the ribald conclusion of this anecdote that Rob loved to share, which involves (an unofficial) debate about the protein content of semen and Harrington admonishing all participants, “Oh, no, don’t tell her that!”
Nor does Isserman (or anyone as far as I can tell), share accounts of the younger Shachtmanites’ propensity for group-sex at conventions, in which, Rob, as a Quaker, was too prudish to participate but not too prudish to inquire what it was like. “It’s a wonderful feeling of comradeship,” he was told.
Rob was full of stories like these, and I loved hearing them. I don’t think I had seen Rob since the 2005 convention in Newark. By 2007, I had quit the party. Looking through my records, my last contact with Rob was at the time of my resignation from the party’s National Committee to which he responded with a fairly stern disapproval. Four days after I resigned from the party Rob noted his 50th year as a member, asking – a broad list; I was merely the audience – if he would finally be shown the secret handshake.
A few weeks ago, after being assigned to Philadelphia (Rob’s hometown) by my union in August, I wrote to Rob’s AOL email account to see if he was up to meeting for dinner. His wife – well, widow, now – Cornelia wrote back to inform me that Rob passed away in February after a long illness beginning the previous November. I cannot begin to tell you how shitty I feel that it took me so long to learn of Rob’s passing. I’m mad at a lot of people about not being informed at the time of his passing, but none more than myself.
Robert W. Tucker deserves a fuller obituary than this, and hopefully one day I’ll feel up to writing it. But for now, i just feel awful. But grateful to have written this much and to have known him while I could.
When, exactly, did the celebrity-obsessed tabloid press switch over to first-name-basis reportage? Celebrities used to have full names, not that long ago in fact. Sure, there was the occasional Cher or Oprah, but they were the exceptions to prove the rule. Or perhaps they were the pioneers that got the tabloids asking “why take up space on the page with useless last names?” So, now we have Brad and Angelina, but also perfectly generic names like Jen and John and Jon and Kate like we’re not only supposed to know who the hell these people are, but we’re buddies. Someone named Nicole shares the cover of US Weekly with Britney as the “Worst Beach Bod.” I recognize neither her face nor her pot belly. Perhaps if there was a last name associated with the unflattering picture, I could place her.
What’s worse is that this cancer is spreading into politics. I guess if you can’t distinguish yourself through policy differences, you can coast on celebrity. So it was when I was in New Hampshire for the primaries that a surprising number of campaign themes emphasized a candidates’ first name – even to the point of dropping any reference to the last. It’s one thing for Hillary to do so, because, really, there could be no other. Same goes for Rudy, I suppose. But Fred? As in bumper stickers that read simply, “Fred ’08.” I thought that perhaps a wayward street team for a new solo record by the B52′s Fred Schneider had gotten mixed up with all the politicking, but, no, it was a legitimate contender for the Presidency of the United States that decided to market himself as just Fred. (Presidential Also-Rans for $500: “Who is Fred Thompson?”)
I suppose that all this first name nonsense is designed to make stars more accessible, more “just like us.” I wonder what effect being encouraged to call a celebrity by his or her first name has on the kinds of people already prone to stalker-ish behavior. I’ll tell you the effect it has on the sort of person who doesn’t watch teevee is to feel more alienated from pop culture. I used to be able to more or less follow who are the popular actors, but they emphasize last names on movie posters, so it’s a real disconnect unless you are already sucked in to the whole TMZ world of 24-hour celebrity gossip.
This informality gets to be too much. There’s only so much you can break formality down before you have to build it back up again so that some new generation can have the fun of tearing it down all over again. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Joe?
Someone has to take a stand. Don’t be “Janet, Miss Jackson if you’re nasty.” Be Ms. Janet Jackson to everyone except your family and closest friends.
Can rock music ever go back to the days of “headphone records,” gatefold albums, mysterious liner notes and fans creating their own image of the band in their minds? Music video did much to kill the radio star, by presenting a carefully screened image for mass consumption…but Ed Sullivan started it all rolling downhill and Marty Scorsese might have reached the nadir with what might otherwise be considered the absolute zenith of rock-n-roll cinema, “The Last Waltz.” His sumptuous concert doc made high art out of simple musical performance, and enshrined the legacy (well, a particular version of it, anyway) of an erstwhile relatively-anonymous, workman-like group of musical superstars, the Band.
That simple, partly-modest, partly-conceited monicker underscores the extent that, without a pre-chosen image foisted upon the listener, this band could be whatever you choose. They first rocketed by prominence in 1968, playing on a plain white slab of modified petroleum product – a bootleg called “The Great White Wonder” – that purported to document some of what the mysterious Bob Dylan had been up to in Woodstock since his motorcycle accident. Before that they had been an anonymous touring band on the Canadian rockabilly circuit, before before being booed around the world supporting Dylan’s wee electric experiment. After that, they were on the cover of “Time” magazine (albeit, in a sketchy line drawing that still left much to the imagination) and on the top of the pops (and Ed Sullivan, too!).
The Band were a true ensemble. Three singers, four multi-instrumentalists, one wicked guitar player. Five members total. Two of the singers played the drums (one alternated between the skins and his piano, the other, a mandolin). Listening to the records, without visual aid, it’s easy to imagine all the permutations and guess who’s singing and who’s playing what. Scorsese’s version of the Band presents guitarist Robbie Robertson as the clear leader of the band, an articulate intellectual and philosopher of rock music and the star of many a close-up. Camera pans make out raspy-throated drummer/singer/mandolin-player Levon Helm to be the main singer, while boyish bassist Rick Danko takes a few cameo turns on vocals. Weird, mysterious Garth Hudson gets a bit wonky on his synthesizers, while additional drummer/pianist Richard Manuel seems like a sideman. The camera loves Robbie, and he tells all the best stories (even if they’re not his), while Levon Helm seems the most “homespun” (the Arkansawyer is the only actual American in the “Americana” band).
Helm’s autobiography, “This Wheel’s On Fire” (co-written with Stephen Davis), is a welcome corrective to Scorsese’s “print the legend” version of the Band. First, of course, is the fact that Helm had been the technical leader of the band (at least, as far as the musician’s union was concerned) during their Canadian rockabilly days, and the one who brought them their independence from founder Ronnie Hawkins. Not to mention that he was the one, after Dylan had recruited him and Robertson to fill out his first post-Newport electric rock band (in Forest Hills, hell yeah!), convinced Dylan to hire the entire Band (then known as Levon and the Hawks).
More important corrections to the legend apply to bandmates. Garth Hudson, as hinted at in “The Last Waltz” by the anecdote that the other members had to pay him additional money as a musical tutor (in their pre-salad days), was the true musical director of the band (especially the expanded “Last Waltz” band with its strings and horns). And poor Richard Manuel, who goes mostly overlooked by Scorsese’s cameras, is the Band’s main voice and true heart and soul. The troubled Manuel, who suffered from substance abuse and ultimately took his own life while on the road with the Band, actually sang lead on the lion’s share of the Band’s songs. The way that Scorsese placed the cameras – and given the listener’s ability to create one’s one mental image when listening to the other records – one (and I mean me) could be forgiven for thinking that most of those songs were being sung by Helm or Danko in a higher register than usual.
Although Helm is clearly very critical of Robertson’s role in the demise and subsequent legend of “The Last Waltz,” the author attempts to remain somewhat magnanimous and notes Robertson’s many contributions, both musical and of leadership. However, any criticism must be tempered slightly by the potential of “sour grapes” and the fact that Helm had ceded his own leadership of the Band by abandoning them while on Dylan’s legendary/disastrous 1966 tour of England when the booing of the folk purists became too much for him. By the time he returned to Woodstock, midway through the Basement Tapes period, band dynamics had obviously changed.
Still, Helm avoids actual bitterness until the afterword written for “Wheel’s” 2000 reprint edition, when mourning the death of Rick Danko years of age. Helm attributes Danko’s death at the relatively young age of 56 to a life of “hard work” and bitterly notes that Danko died with his money (royalties from “The Last Waltz” and other recordings) in Robbie Robertson’s pocket.
If you can find the full, ten-minute clip on your favorite internet video-sharing service, David Letterman’s blackmail confession was brilliant, riveting and hysterical. It was almost a throwback to his nervy, early days on “Late Night.” If only the blackmailer had been revealed to be Andy Kaufman.
Michael Azerrad’s excellent collection of 13 micro-biogrophies of beloved 80′s indie bands is a love letter to the era when pop culture began to fragment into mini-mass media of fanzines, underground rock clubs and vanity record labels. Cribbed from a Minutemen lyrics, Azerrad’s book, “Our Band Could Be Your Life” fleshes out the notion of gaining inspiration, principles and encouragement by the songs from some obscure band that your parents and most of your classmates never heard of.
Teh internets have exacerbated this tendency towards fragmentation. It is regrettable, to some extent, that there can never be another Beatles to saunter across (the equivalent of) Ed Sullivan’s stage and capture the hearts and imaginations of an entire nation in two and a half minutes. But it is perhaps better to have the Replacements, whose music feels more personal due to their underdog cult status, and whose “Let it Be” far outshines the sorry first record to share that name (made famous by its teevee and film pedigree).
Focused on the SST record label, Azerrad’s book has a clear narrative guiding it, despite its scattered vignette structure. It starts with Southern California’s Black Flag, who spearheaded not just America’s hardcore punk scene, but a network of record labels and concert venues (VFW halls, people’s basements and the occasional Actual Night Club), and follows the story as labelmates The Minutemen and Husker Du push against hardcore’s rigid boundaries, while east coast contemporaries Minor Threat aided in rigidly defining hardcore’s boundaries before leaving the scene behind.
Ian McKaye’s musical progress away from hardcore’s stifling “loud fast rules” while strictly adhering to a non-conformist independence from Corporate America, mass media and liquor provides “Your Band” with its most compelling narrative, as well as its most trenchant observation, courtesy of McKaye’s Fugazi bandmate Guy Picciotto:
“PEOPLE ARE LIVING IN THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED, YOUR PARENTS HAVE TAKEN ALL THE DRUGS THEY CAN TAKE, YOU’VE HAD THE 70′S, YOU HAD HEAVY METAL – GET WITH IT, IT’S OVER WITH, WAKE UP. KIDS ARE LIVING RE-RUNS, THE SAME CRAP OVER AND OVER AND THEIR MINDS GET CLOSED TIGHTER AND TIGHTER, IT’S SUCH A WASTE.”
I missed hardcore, so 80′s indie was all about the Replacements for me (and REM, but they’re not indie enough for Azerrad). Other acts feted by Azerrad (such as Big Black and the Butthole Surfers) were familiar to me by reputation, but no one had made such a compelling case to purchase “Hairway to Steven” or “Songs About Fucking” until this book. Perhaps these bands, too, could be my life.
I rarely write directly about work on this blarg, but some of this year’s big adventures got a nice write-up from Beryl Benderly at Science Magazine. Relevant excerpts follows:
On 20 July, the postdocs at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, received official recognition for their new union. It’s the nation’s third postdoc union, but the first to be part of the same union as their lab chiefs.After a swift and successful signature-collecting campaign, the 350 postdocs on the university’s three campuses became a bargaining unit of the Rutgers Council of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)-American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Chapters. Affiliated with both AAUP, the professional society for college and university teachers, and AFT, a national labor union within AFL/CIO, this hybrid group represents all of Rutgers’s faculty members, research associates, and graduate student employees. A sister union under the all-university AFT umbrella represents the administrative staff.
[snip]
It was, in fact, a drive several years ago to solidify the position of campus administrators by bringing them into the union that first sparked interest in organizing the postdocs. As organizers spoke with “administrators, some of whom were in the laboratories, we would encounter postdocs very frequently,” recalls Shaun Richman, an AFT national representative. “We had all these anecdotes of postdocs sort of sauntering up to us and saying, ‘Hey, can we get into this whole union thing?’ “
Then, “earlier this year, Rutgers AFT representatives [began] asking around to postdocs about their particular conditions and their interest in unionizing,” says postdoc Alan Wan, who was “heavily involved” in the drive. “Obviously, since the faculty and the graduate students–the members of the community that we interact with on a daily basis–are in the union,” many postdocs also became interested, he continues.
A major part of the union’s organizing strategy was having a group of postdocs committed to the cause talk to other postdocs “to hear their stories [and] make the case,” Wan says. “If we had a conversation with someone and they were really positive, we tried to get them involved,” Richman adds. A second strategic step was talking with PIs, because “the postdocs are essentially the employees of the faculty, who are our union members,” Richman continues. “We knew we had to have conversations with some leaders of that community. … There [were] fears. For a principal investigator, I think the gut reaction is … ‘This is going to break the grant. We can’t afford it. We’re not going to get renewed.’ “
But [AAUP-AFT past President Lisa] Klein, who discussed the union with fellow PIs, reports encountering no serious opposition. “Some jokingly said, ‘So I can’t abuse them anymore?’ ” she recalls. “There was no reluctance on the part of these PIs. They did want to see that the postdocs were treated as member of the community.”
The talking campaign was done quietly, “one-on-one, usually colleague-to-colleague,” Richman says. “There was no Web site, … no leaflets.” Once the organizers “knew we were in a position that we could get a majority of the postdocs to agree,” Wan continues, “we officially started the card campaign” right after Memorial Day. The talking took several months, but the official campaign to collect signatures took under 2 weeks. State law makes unionization automatic if more than half of a work group give their signed consent, just as in California. “Two-thirds of all the postdocs signed,” Wan says.
I’m coming up on a year in Bay Ridge, which perhaps makes me a “regular.” It’s enough time, apparently, to make friends with the Chinese merchants on 4th Avenue, who seem to really want me to be Jewish. I suppose having Jews around is good business for dry cleaners and Chinese take-out.
I made it to Win Hing last night, just before closing time, to order some sesame chicken. The woman behind the counter, who always wears a pink Yankees cap and speaks very broken English, noted the lateness of my arrival and asked “Working late?” As the food was being prepared, and she started the closing-time clean-up ritual, she asked me for pointers on her English, which must indicate some form of familiarity.
“Is that how you say? ‘Can you sit there?’” “I would say,” I said to her, “‘Would you sit there?’ It would seem more polite. Besides, ‘can you sit?’ could mean, ‘Are you able to?’” She clarified, “Ah, like are you cripple?”
“Exactly.” Finally, she asked, simply, “Are you Jewish?” It’s probably the hat that I always wear, I guess to myself. “Ah, kinda.” “People always say this thing,” she said, “Kinda. What does this mean? Kinda.”
“Uh, it means, ‘not enough to count.’”
At the dry cleaners today, the female proprietor is surprised to see me midday. “Are you on vacation?,” she asks. Yeah, I took a day off to take care of my dry cleaning and other errands. Because I’m cool like that. This cleaner has a very computerized, talking cash register that greets customers with a bubbly “Welcome back!” It’s probably marketed to self-conscious immigrants. The woman behind the counter, however, notes my name on the computer-printed receipt. “Rich,” she says with a pause, “man. Are you…Jewish people?” “Uh,” I hesitate, “not enough to count.”
“I used to live on Kings Highway,” she explains. “All Jewish people there. Names all end with ‘man.’ Fried Man. Gold Man. I see Rich Man, so I ask.” I explain my heritage, for some reason, “Well, my father was Jewish. But he converted.” She smiles and nods at this answer. “Bye,” she says, as I walk out, “Have a nice day!” while the bubbly computer chirps, “Have a nice day!”
It’s been previously noted the unnatural oddness that is leaving behind a virtual representation of oneself on the myface. As this shit gets more mainstream, the awkwardness gets more familiar and yet more surreal. In the Times, Adam Cohen writes of a friend’s Facebook profile becoming a sort of living shrine to a dead-too-soon friend. At least it served that function to those who friended him up while he was still alive, and until his surviving family chooses to pull the plug on the profile. But what of those who die unloved, unmourned, unfriended?
I recently threw in the towel and joined Facebook, the creepy, creepy improvement on Friendster and MySpace. Immediately, the computer intelligence starts recommending friends I should connect with. How does this bloody thing know the names of girls that I went on one or two dates with three or four years ago? And why does this blasted thing want me to be friends with Don Busky? Busky died late last year, and in life we were something closer to enemies than friends.
He was always an odd fellow, more noted for his reclusiveness than his actual politics or personality. As an ambitious young turk, I quickly butted heads with the guy in an attempt to recruit eager new recruits to charter a more active Philadelphia local of the Socialist Party and overthrow an innocent savant who was more interested in publishing silly little zines with a socialist bent. Shortly after I showed up for work in the party’s national office, as a teenage socialist in 1996, my buddy Clement Joseph started cracking jokes about the disembodied brain in a jar that was Donald F. Busky. My only interactions with the comrade were a fairly acrimonious e-mail exchange over his failure to properly represent the party (or, indeed, turn up to a single meeting) in the “Unity 2000″ rally planning. His last message to me (and every party member for whom he could find an email address) was addressed, simply, “Cde. Richman owes some apologies.” I met him a few months later at a YPSL convention near Rittenhouse Square in 2001. We spoke not a word, but it was the first time I had been in his physical presence. The brain in a jar was a large man, shy and soft-spoken. He was a devoted Mac user, a labor buff and adjunct professor. We might have been friends if we hadn’t started as enemies. It was a sad loss, but C’est la vie. I soon left the party, and didn’t hear about Busky again until Gabe Ross passed on the unfortunate news about his death last December.
The next time I saw Cde. Busky’s name was on an open public records access request for the list of adjunct faculty at a community college down in southern New Jersey, where I’m helping the part-timers form a union. Prof. Donald F. Busky gets to be a voter in their union election, except that he couldn’t possibly vote “Union Yes” (as he surely would have) because he is No Longer Employed. Still, it was a kick in the guts to see his name on that OPRA list, just as it is a kick in the guts to see him recommended as a friend on Facebook whenever I log in, and to see his name and home address on a mailing label for a mailing we worked on last Friday for the union campaign.
I don’t think his elderly mother (if she’s still alive), or any other surviving relative knows enough to get Cde. Busky’s Facebook profile retired. Therefore, he will continue to haunt me. Perhaps I’ll learn to be a better comrade to those who have yet to shuffle off this mortal coil.
In the wake of a fire that disabled the Throgs Neck Bridge, Long Island and state officials are contemplating construction of a new L.I. Sound crossing. This would be a 16-mile tunnel connecting Oyster Bay in Long Island to Rye, NY, the home of summer camps and amusement parks in Westchester County. The Cross-Sound tunnel would cost at least $25 billion, and would charge one-way tolls of $25. For those who would question the value of such a project, as well as its staggering costs and potential environmental impact, Oyster Bay (Long Island) Supervisor John Venditto justifies the proposal thusly: “I don’t think you can ever have too many ways to get off of Long Island.” To this, dear reader, your writer can add little of value.
I’m slowly getting accustomed to life in South Brooklyn. Bay Ridge might wind up being the perfect neighborhood for me, in all of its remote and eccentric charm. It’s very quiet and beautiful down here, with the stately Verrazano bridge towering over everything. My own view of the bridge is minimal. You have to crane your neck out my bedroom window to see the very tippy-top of the eastern spire over an abandoned construction site.
The fog rolls off the harbor and blankets the neighborhood with a strangely comforting regularity. It can make driving over the Verrazano feel like walking through the London streets of a Jack the Ripper story. The foghorns of passing ships lull me to sleep, or gently awake me like the distant clickety-clack of the Long Island Rail Road in the house in which I grew up.
I can’t look at the rocket launch
The trophy wives of the astronauts
Bay Ridge is about as old timey as Brooklyn gets. The bridge connects two military bases. I’m not sure what’s still housed at Fort Hamilton except for a VA hospital, but the neighborhood is dotted with armed forces recruitment centers. The local barbershops offer free haircuts to servicemen, and front lawns still display their “Support the Troops” signs, faded and yellowed.
And I won’t listen to their words
’cause I like birds
I spend most of my time in New Jersey, or on the road, for work, so, so far, Bay Ridge is more of a bedroom community for me than much of a real home. I haven’t checked out nearly enough of the local restaurants and bars. I’m a little too reliant on take-out (particularly for a nabe lacking in any Mexican food).
I don’t care for walkin’ downtown
Crazy auto car gonna mow me down
The whole driving-between-Jersey-and-Brooklyn thing has made me even less keen on ever going in to Manhattan. My car’s been in the shop this week, so I’ve been having to take the N/R to Penn Station to take the Jersey Transit. It’s an inhuman squeeze.
Look at all the people like cows in a herd
Well, I like birds
Our Congressional district is lumped in with Staten Island, and, until last year, we were the only district in NYC to send a Republican to Congress. Early on, while at brunch at a local pub, I overheard a bunch of middle-aged bellyachers complaining about the upcoming MLK holiday and speculating that with our new (BLACK!!!) president it was the first of many such holidays. Next up, Huey P. Newton Day!
I can’t stand in line at the store
The mean little people are such a bore
duck took a while to get used to the new digs. While our we were in storage, waiting to close, we stayed in a studio apartment, which greatly comforted the clingy little beast. Now in a far more spacious two bedroom, she spent her first weeks getting lost in each new room and crying. Eventually, she rediscovered the joy of windows.
Although we are once again on the second floor, this time our windows face the quiet parking lot of a church, as opposed to a busy boulevard with buses driving noisily past. Up on the window sill, duck gets calmer and actually shuts up for a change. She seemed to take a particular interest in the birds.
But it’s all right if you act like a turd
’cause I like birds
I bought a bird feeder to encourage the wee winged ones to gather by our fire escape. The bird feed label promised to attract blue jays, cardinals and other “attractive outdoor pets” (as opposed to those dead common finches and pidgeons), and, boy, did it deliver.
If you’re small and on a search
I’ve got a feeder for you to perch on
I can’t yet name every variety of bird that’s stopped by my fire escape for a quick meal. I’m not quite at the point of buying a book to recognize them, although, it occurs to me that since grandma died it does fall to someone to be the family’s resident birdwatcher.
For now, I may content myself with hanging up a second feeder and filling it with a different kind of bird feed, just to see if I can increase the biodiversity of the fire escape. Maybe I’ll add a small plant, who knows?
I’ve got a feeder for you to perch on
Yeah, I’ve got a feeder for you to perch on
(Apologies to Mark Oliver Everett)
Finally watching Julian Temple’s revisionist Sex Pistols documentary, “The Filth and the Fury,” I get the feeling that perhaps I wasn’t cheated after all. Like many 15-year-olds, the Sex Pistols for me were a gateway to new rebellion and new friends. I bought every officially released note of music and a goodly amount of bootlegs, eagerly read every book or article I could about them and sought out every interview I could with John Lydon, as he was legally obligated to call himself back then. (In fact, I was tuning in to W-DRE for an interview with Lydon on the occasion of the publication of his new memoir when I learned of Kurt Cobain’s suicide.)
The Pistols had the kind of attitude that only a 15-year-old could love. Spitting, sneering swagger. Vague contempt for authority (who? why?). Non-conformist and no respect for rock-n-roll as an “Institution.”
And then you grow up, and you start to think that instead of being some kind of truth-telling iconoclastic leader, that maybe John Lydon (nee Rotten) is a wee bit autistic and just generally a prick. And perhaps a bunch of nabobs wearing identical black leather jackets and purple mohawks are victims of the worst kind of conformity. And perhaps rebellion requires a specific target and grievance. And, worst of all, perhaps punk rock, as ritualistic rebellion against record labels and Elvis Presley has become a kind of institution itself. And then the Sex Pistols regroup for a couple of cash-in nostalgia tours, and you put away your Pistols records for fifteen years or so.
Well, the music still packs a punch. And Lydon can still focus his withering rage with a laser-like focus (if only Temple could more specifically place the Pistols and the punk rock movement in their particular geopolitical moment). But, mostly, “The Filth and the Fury” finds surprising pathos in the pathetic story of John Simon Ritchie (nee Sid Vicious). Throughout the film, Temple weaves in an interview with Vicious recorded after the Pistols breakup but before his New York adventures. With a stupid bloody scab on his face, Vicious comes across as both a pathetic junky and the scared little kid (he couldn’t have been more than 19-years-old). He just seems so tragically overwhelmed by circumstances. The poor kid can’t even manage a poker face, a facade or even a no comment. Instead, he plainly and meekly complains that he doesn’t want to be a junky all his life, and describes in excruciating detail the pain of junk withdrawal. Elsewhere, some prescient videographer documents, the uneasy co-dependent co-existence he shared with groupie/murder victim Nancy Spungeon. If the tears that John Lydon chokes back in remembrance (far more effectively recorded in the shadows than if Temple had focused a spotlight) don’t get you choked up, then maybe you’re as black-hearted as the film’s villain, Malcolm McClaren, who profited from Sid’s pathetic end.
The film was good enough that it inspired me to rip my old Pistols CDs onto my digital audio player (no brand names, comrades). Would that someone would do for Nirvana for today’s 15-year-olds, fifteen years hence.
Nearly three years after organizing their union, the professional and support staff at Sussex County Community College have had to endure union-busting efforts and attacks on their free speech rights.
Take action by telling the college administration to respect their employees’ rights and bargain in good faith with the American Federation of Teachers, and join us on Tuesday, April 28 from 4:30 to 6:00 for a rally in support of the union at Sussex CCC.
