New DeLillo Novel

The New York Times reviews Falling Man, the new novel by Don DeLillo. Unfortunately, Michiko Kakutani's review is mixed at best. It appears likely that DeLillo may never recapture the magic of his late 1980s/1990s ouvre, which matches the best run of any 20th century writer. Falling Man is DeLillo's attempt to deal head on with the terrorist attacks of 2001, but it's an oddly slim book, only 246 pages, for such a topic, almost like trying to capture America post-9/11 in a one-hour movie. The first DeLillo book I "tried" was White Noise, which blew me away, even changed my life, as Eric Clapton used to say about every group in every VH1 Behind The Music special. Then I moved on to Americana, End Zone, Mao II and Libra, his great take on how the Kennedy assassination likely went down. The thing about DeLillo's books is that they stand up to repeat reading like the work of few other contemporary writers. In this way they resemble Kurt Vonnegut's novels, but DeLillo's books will stay with you and haunt you long after you've finished the final page, as cliched as that sounds.

This Is Me Catching Up

Let me put it right out there: I've been feeling quite guilty, remiss even, over the lack of blog entries I've been able to post. It's been a combination of unequal parts being busy at work and then being obsessed with acquiring new music, such that almost every free moment in front of a computer has been spend burning CDs or burning new music into my computer. I should point out that over this very weekend I got a new computer for my apartment. And as soon as I figure out which of the seemingly endless choices for an internet provider to go with, I will be up and running on the information superhighway.

The problem with missing so much time is that you literally can never catch up on world events or even personal business. For instance, you may be wondering how my birthday went last week, which places I went out to celebrate with friends and family, etc. Some of you may be curious as to how I felt about the horrible school shooting by that ugly dork of a loser who went ballistic on the Virginia Tech campus. For the record, I was adamantly against the whole sordid episode.

You also may be wondering how my freelancing career has been going. Let's just say it's been as busy as it's ever been. I think I only missed two days in the entire month of April, which is deceiving because there were days I worked two different places on the same day. So in addition to my regular shifts at LT, I've been working some one- or two-day projects elsewhere. In fact, I just got a call from the Agency informing me that CB needs me for two full days, tomorrow and Wednesday, so I have to check with LT that it's okay for me to miss those two days and come back Thursday. This could be a very lucrative week if it all works out. It's always a balancing act but it's good to be wanted by different places, good to be in demand.

Then there's also the recent NFL draft to discuss, but first I have to do some research on the picks the Cowboys made. I do know that in addition to getting a stud pass rusher in LB Anthony Spencer from Purdue, somehow we came out of the weekend with Cleveland's overall #1 pick for 2008, which of course could be a very, very high pick indeed.

So that's it for now. It's back to work so that I can live to write another day. Write to live and live to write.

Imus-Free Mornings

THIS MONDAY MORNING, for the first time in about 5,000 or 6,000 mornings, New Yorkers did not have the option of spending quality radio time with the Imus in the Morning Show on WFAN. Instead, the same 660 AM spectrum cruelly brought listeners a wholly unnecessary dose of Mike & the Mad Dog, the station’s usual afternoon drive sports talk show team that will be filling in until management decides how best to replace Don Imus.

By now even alien life forms are aware of the three infamous words that cost the broadcasting legend his morning radio program and possibly his career after more than 30 years in business. I used to be a huge fan going back more than a decade, when the show was still based more on scripted skits and celebrity imitations than on interviews with broadcasting bigwigs and politico blowhards. Way ahead of the curve as usual, last August I announced in these very pages that I was in fact personally boycotting the I-Man, not because of any problem I had with the racial tone of the show, but simply because Imus had effectively turned the program over to his producer, Bernard McGuirk, and a steady coterie of in-studio regulars like the sanity-challenged ex-NYC cop Bo Deitl and redneck jackasses like Larry the Cable Guy. Plus, I grew tired of his quest to be all things to all people, trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator in his listening audience while simultaneously trying to play the intellectual as he chatted with writers and pundits. Despite his eventual opposition to the Iraq war, in my opinion Imus far too often gave passes to right wing hacks, and that was why I wished him into the cornfield, but I never wanted the guy fired. It’s like when eventually you’ve had enough of your parents at a certain age, all their arbitrary rules and insanity, so you decide to run away from home. Well, you still don’t want anything bad to happen to your mom and dad; you just need a break. That’s the point I reached with Imus. I wasn’t gonna listen every day, but once in a while you tuned in to hear a few yucks, as Imus himself used to put it.

Ultimately, it was bad karma that did in the I-Man. Having banned Sid Rosenberg for his own more-than-just-tasteless comments about black athletes, loyal-to-a-fault Imus finally relented and let him call in to the show once in a while; it was Rosenberg who Imus was talking to when he made his fateful wisecrack about the Rutgers players. And it was his own producer Bernie who egged him on. The perfect storm of imbecility did in the I-Man, and it was his own fault. It was far from the first time that Imus had gone over the line, but this time there was Internet video to capture it and bloggers and commentators to hammer away at his latest transgression. And somehow, at least for me, it was much worse to actually see Imus saying those words than listening to it firsthand or hearing about it after the fact.

No matter how bad the fallout WFAN had to deal with, there is no reason to subject listeners to Mike Francesa and Chris Russo so early in the morning. The station plans to have the duo perform double duty, at least for a couple weeks – doing the morning show and then their own show afternoons at 2:00. That is a train wreck waiting to happen. If this morning is any indication, where the two know-it-alls were joined (for some unexplained reason) by longtime Imus sidekick Charles McCord, New Yorkers are in for insufferably bad radio, because the two sports hosts are singularly unsuited for a time slot that requires at least a small degree of irreverence and wit, such that I predict the two will become even bigger caricatures and parodies of themselves.

Late last week when news of the Imus firing came down, Mike and the Mad Dog predictably went into full-on outrage-slash-self-righteous mode, with both vociferously blasting station management for their disloyalty and cowardice toward their guy, who brought in more money for the station than anyone. So why do they bail out CBS management by agreeing to fill in as morning replacements? I gotta admit, I had already had it with those two, but just for that sleazy move alone, I will be rooting against these two loudmouths for a long, long time.
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With all the furor over Don’s and Ho’s in the news, I found it more than a little ironic that this very weekend fate saw fit to "announce" that one quite unnappily-headed Ho – smooth-voiced Hawaiian pop singer Don Ho – finally passed on to that great big luau in the sky. I doubt the classy crooner best known for rockin’ the Tiny Bubbles ever called women ho’s or bitches in his songs, but I could be wrong; maybe he planned to use his great god-given monicker (MC Ho, anyone?) to cut a few gangster rap albums to cash in on the hip-hop market. *****************************************************************
I have a system when it comes to the start of a new baseball season: I simply pay no attention until 10 games have been played. That means not watching or listening to games, not even looking at box scores in the paper. Sure, I know A-Rod’s off to a great start, and the Mets are in second place (sweet!), but who cares if someone is hitting .575 after four games. At least 10 games is a body of work, however small, that you can go on. My system worked out better than usual this year, what with the absolutely awful weather we’re getting on the East Coast and in the Midwest, with rain-outs, snow-outs, frigid temps, no sun whatsoever... And with the NBA and NHL playoffs starting, and the NFL draft less than two weeks away, there’s no great urgency to follow baseball closely for at least another 10 games or so. The Yanks are struggling along with a sub-.500 record, Mariano blew a save yesterday, and the injuries to their starting rotation continue to mount, but as long as the Mets or Red Sox don’t run away and hide, I’m OK for now.
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That wacky power pop festival I went to in Brooklyn a few weeks ago is still making news. As I mentioned, a great time was had by all, but I never knew that I was attending some historical event. Apparently it was the power pop version of Woodstock, at least according to this week’s Village Voice, which featured a gushing review of the event. No mention of $11 drinks and $6 beers at the bar, but hey, a small price to pay I guess to see six bands for $22!

New Wave Nostalgia

Last Friday a friend asked me what I was doing for the upcoming weekend, so I told her that I was going to a club in Brooklyn to see a bill that included the Speedies and the Neighborhoods, a few punk bands I had seen back in their/my heyday, and I jokingly called it an exercise in pure nostalgia. Little did I know how fitting that description was, because when we stepped into Southpaw, the small club in yuppified, hipsterized Park Slope, it was indeed a true time warp, with most of the patrons sporting spiky or shaggy haircuts and wearing skinny ties, buttons, badges and other authentic-looking accouterments from the new wave era. All I had was my leather jacket and the actual memories from that time period.

The concert featured six bands on the bill and was the second of four nights of what Southpaw was calling a Power Pop Festival. We were really there only to see the last two groups: the Neighborhoods, the legendary Boston trio who would be going on fifth, and then Brookyn's own Speedies, who would close things out. I had seen the Neighborhoods at Hurrah’s waaaa-aaaay back in March of ’79, my very first punk show...mind-blowing, life-altering...and judging by the youth of the crowd, it had to be a first for a lot of kids that night. The Speedies were best known for a handful of singles, including 1979’s terrific Lemme Take Your Foto b/w No Substitute. I don’t think they even had a whole album to their credit. The Neighborhoods also were best known for a single 45: the tremendous No Place Like Home b/w Prettiest Girl released in 1980, which features great lines like:

"Mom and Dad are so frightnin'
Every day's a crisis
Dad comes home and he's nervous
The air's so thick you can't breathe!"

&

"My best friend is my hi-fi
At Thirty-Three and Forty-Fi-Yi-Yive!"

The Neighborhoods did release a few albums, including 1987’s overlooked Reptile Men, but nothing that matched the blistering intensity of that initial single.

Johnny Star had done his research before the show, reading the group bio on the Speedies Website and discovering how the band members had gone on to have interesting careers after they dissolved around 1981. One guy made a lot of money working for Apple Computer, where he helped design the QuickTime video system; the drummer became a lawyer and then a judge; while another member became a photographer and a professor at Yale University. Also, Hewlett Packard bought the rights to Foto and plans to feature the song in an upcoming TV commercial campaign. Surely not your typical postpunk-breakup story! But then again, after playing in a few fledgling bands of my own, I grew up to become whatever it is I am, while Johnny Star became a NYC fireman, and various other friends from that scene went back to school or became chefs, limo drivers, carpenters' wives…

The first four bands were of varying quality, but one group, the Baby Shakes, did stand out: three young Asian girls in matching black&white outfits playing loud&fast/melodic Ramones-style songs and looking exceedingly cute in the process. I took some cell phone pics but alas they’re pretty blurry.

















Also ran into Lyn at the bar, who was part of the New York new wave band The Comateens back in the day along with Nik North (nee Nick Dembling), who I worked with later at the Wall Street Transcript. Just another of the night’s funny coincidences I guess but it seemed to all make sense.


It was just like old times as we took our place in the crowd near the stage, sweating and laughing and singing along with everyone else. There’s still nothing quite like the rush of good live music. Between sets I would get some air outside, grubbing smokes from the young hipsters, reminiscing with older former punks nearer my own demographic, and checking out the hot young punk chicks dressed in their carefully cultivated customes of spandex, leather, fishnet stockings and spike heels. Still works for me.

My one little nit to pick is that the Speedies managed to cram around 10 songs into their set, but somehow overlooked my favorite, No Substitute, with the catchy but cynical Buzzcocks-like chorus,

"Girls in love they don't exist!"

After their set we caught up with Allen, the Speedies drummer and now a Supreme Court judge, outside the club. We busted his balls about the band not playing No Substitute, but he said the band didn’t have time to "re-learn" all the old tunes in time for their first show in almost 30 years. True, the beginning of No Substitute does have an intricate drum intro, but still... It would be like seeing Grandmaster Flash live and they decided to play The Message but not White Lines! Unacceptable.

While the Speedies’ set was very sloppy but fun, the Neighborhoods, with all three original members alive and intact (no small feat given the passage of time), sounded almost as tight as they did nearly three decades earlier -- bouncing around the stage with the same manic energy that characterized their old sets. Unlike the Speedies, the 'Hoods rightly played both sides of their best-known single, as well as the best song (Pure & Easy) from Reptile Men. It was a night where everything seemed to come full circle.

Notably Quotable

Some words to live by, followed by sarcastic commentary.

“Well done is better than well said.”
--Benjamin Franklin
Actually, well hung is probably best of all.

“Democracies are prone to war, and war consumes them.”
--W.H. Seward
War also makes people in high places an awful lot of money.

“Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.”
George Santayana
I’m not exactly sure what this means but it’s disturbing and I’m glad someone else had the guts to finally say it.

“He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom.”
--James P. Huneker
Not always, Mr. Huneker. Sometimes a fool is just a fool.

“The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed.”
--Emerson
Sounds like a few bloggers I know.

“Genius is lonely without the surrounding presence of people to inspire it.”
--T.W. Higginson
No wonder I feel so all alone.

“Machinery is the sub-conscious mind of the world.”
Gerald Stanley Lee
Tell me something I don't know.
“It is not a custom with me to keep money to look at.”
--George Washington
That's because his own face was on half the currency.

“Hunger is the handmaid of genius.”
--Mark Twain
It’s also the handmaid of a lot of guys doing 10 to 20 for armed robbery.

“A man of vast and varied misinformation.”
William Gaynor while mayor of New York in describing
Rabbi Stephen Wise
That description fits a few neocons I can think of as well.

“There is no knowledge that is not power.”
--Emerson
Try telling that to the guy who finishes third on Jeopardy.

“I don’t think there’s ever been an appointment in my life where I wanted the other guy to show up.”
--George Costanza
I thought it was just me all this time.

Post Pancake Pontifications

"On with the dance, let joy be unconfined..." -- Mark Twain

Ya know, I really think CBS should have taken the opportunity to run a few more SUV commercials during the NCAA tournament. I mean, there were only around a couple hundred each game…

And how many timeouts and breaks were there during each 20-minute half? If there were more than two or three stretches of actual game time exceeding 3 minutes I would be shocked. And never once did I see them staying live during a late timeout to build some drama; it was always cut to commercial, with at least 9 out of 10 ads being car commercials, & I don’t recall seeing a single car ad that was not for SUVs…

Besides promoting obesity, bad driving, wasting gasoline & taking up too much damn space, here's something else these vehicles now have to answer for: a 21-year-old kid who worked as the North Carolina University team mascot was struck & killed in New Jersey last week by one of these monstrous machines, & now his life is literally over. Is it going overboard on my part to blame the model of car on Jason Ray's death? Maybe, maybe not. It just seems that every time we read about a hit&run driver killing a pedestrian, it's invariably an SUV that's responsible for the carnage. Perhaps it's due to the drivers being up so high & looking down on the world both literally & figuratively, brazenly chatting on their cell phones -- which seems to go hand in hand, no pun intended. Riding a bicycle on the city streets has become a much less enjoyable exercise due to these road-hogging behemoths, along with the selfish dumbasses who cruise down our streets in Hummers & the like. But it's just a fact that the odds increase against anyone surviving a crash or accident involving an SUV due to the sheer heft of the vehicle. I suppose if you live out in the boonies or in a hilly rural area and have a large family, you need the 4-wheel drive & space for the kids. But if you live in an urban area, it's overkill to the max. I really thought these things would be phased out by now.

After all, why should Americans think about conserving energy in the year 2007? It’s not like we can’t just invade another Middle Eastern country and take their oil so that we can keep driving around with our Support The Troops decals…

If last year’s NCAA tourney was defined by lower seeds like George Mason upsetting favorites, this one has seen the chalk winning with numbing regularity. That has made it much less exciting for the average fan…

Also, take away the betting pools, and if you didn't go to a particular school, why should anyone really care which team of overly tattooed, corn-rowed black teenagers emerges victorious against the other? Just because of the uniform, I suppose, but with the best players now staying in school for one or two years tops, there are just no more rivalries being fostered anymore like you used to have with St. John’s-Georgetown when the Big East was in its heyday. Now kids don’t even have to take more than one or two classes anymore for their first year. (All-American C Greg Oden is reportedly taking two classes this semester as a freshman at Ohio State, one being History of Rock&Roll.) Maybe we should show these student athletes’ grade point average and class loads when they go to the free throw line instead of points and rebounds, as well as the graduation rates of the school whenever we zoom in to see one of these self-important coaches prancing along the sidelines…

Other complaints about the NCAA coverage: The cameras show the exact same angle constantly. How about a little innovation here? Show some floor-level shots for a few possessions so that you can appreciate how tall these guys are. If you always show these athletes from overhead, it gets very boring. Give us a view as if we were sitting courtside at the game, and sustain it for one or two trips up and down the floor. Do I have to think of everything here?!…

Also, the 3-point line is a joke. It’s a little over 19 feet from the basket, which is an average jump shot really. (The NBA 3-point line ranges from 22 feet at its closest near the sidelines to over 23 feet at the arc.) I would strip the 3-point basket altogether in college. I saw one kid take a 3-point shot with his team down a point and less than a minute to go. Hello! And nobody said a thing about it – his coach, the announcers. It’s part of what has made the game almost unwatchable, to say nothing of all the traveling, walking, steps, pivot foot being picked up, shuffled, switched you see in an average game. The college game has finally reached the stage where it’s about as meaningful and memorable as any inner city pickup game…




















Don’t even let me get started on the horrible sportsmanship being displayed, with players screaming at the top of their lungs as they run down the court after every made shot, as well as all the look-at-me antics the average student-athlete engages in. Of course, the very term student-athlete has become a misnomer. I would also cut down on the number of scholarships given to each school. Why shouldn’t there be a few walk-ons on every team, mixed with four or five kids there on scholarship? Would the games be any less enjoyable, and the players any more lacking in fundamentals, if that were the case? I don’t see how myself…

Speaking of sports broadcast news, for once there’s a positive development to announce: Joe Theismann has been kicked out of ESPN’s Monday Night Football booth, about 10 years too late, because you could search high and low and not find a Theismann supporter, outside of his immediate family. Hope he now finally gets treatment for that diarrhea of the mouth that’s been plaguing him ever since he left the Redskins…

John Thompson Sr. has become a pretty good color guy on radio broadcasts, but is there any reason for him to be calling Georgetown games that his son John Thompson III is coaching in? Well, there he was on the radio yesterday in the North Carolina game, and by the end of the Hoyas’ win, he was basically in tears telling listeners how much it meant to him. I know it’s only a “game” but isn’t this like Bill Clinton moderating a debate among Democratic presidential candidates? Well, isn’t it? I’m asking the questions here today… Maybe it bothered me because I hate Georgetown and their fans now that they've again become good enough to root against, complete with another young Ewing, son of ex-Knick center Patrick...

Before we leave basketball, let me mention that my Philly 76ers have modestly put together a pretty good stretch over the last few weeks, first winning 8 out of 10, then dropping 2 games (by a combined 71 points, including a brutal half-a-hundred loss to the Rockets, 124-74!), before winning two straight again, including an impressive road win at Miami after trailing by 19 points in the first half. The Sixers still have the longest of long shots to make the playoffs, but it's a positive to finish the season on a high note, even if it costs us a lottery pick in the NBA draft...

Met a friend early Sunday morning for breakfast at the world-famous Neptune Diner in Astoria, voted best diner in Queens at some point in the last five years by The Daily News. Decided to follow my friend’s lead and order the pancakes, as I was sick of eggs, having just had the egg special with my brother the day before at Mike’s Diner. Big mistake, literally. When the flapjacks arrived at our table, I was flabbergasted, if I can say that anymore on the Internet, at the size of these things. Each pancake was literally the size of a regulation Frisbee, hubcap or record album, whichever is bigger, and there were 3 or 4 of them sitting there. I would rather have a bunch of smaller pancakes, your silver dollar variety, because it was more than a little monotonous to make your way through these freakishly large, mutant, griddle cakes on steroids, which could double as manhole covers in a pinch. I thought I was hungry, famished even, but I couldn’t make my way through a whole plate of these things…

Had a double dip last Thursday, working first for LT from 9 till 2, and then shooting downtown for a new client, a famous advertising agency that I had never heard of before stepping foot into their Varick Street office at 2:30 that day. I caught a bunch of stuff, really cleaned up both proposals, they were naturally grateful for my expertise, and lo & behold we have another client in the fold. The office was a lot like the one at S., another ad agency I go to that is a few blocks away: a big loft, everything painted white (walls, ceilings, workspaces, people) with row after row of young white attractive happy creatively fulfilled professional types. Hopefully they’ll call back and will become regulars on my freelance merry-go-round. By the way, that was my second double-dip day in two weeks, where I worked two short shifts at two different places on the same day. I like the feeling of hustling between different gigs, makes me feel like I'm in demand…

Also added another employment agency last week, a place down on Madison. Although they’re not exclusively in publishing per se like my main freelance agency is, they did get me an interview already, which I went to last Tuesday (I’m not gonna mention which company it was for now). I think it went OK, the guy seemed to like me, as much as you can tell on these things, and then I took a proofreading test: two pages of pop culture, music, movie content and the like, right up my alley. I know I caught all the spelling/grammar/punctuation details, but I also know I may have missed a few names and such. I wasn’t allowed to use a computer to take the test of course, and I know I got Natalie Portman’s name wrong (giving her two nn’s. and I left actor Stephen Rea as "Rhea" even though I wanted to take out that damn ‘h’ … I don’t think anyone was gonna get 100 percent on the test, but did I do well enough or better than the competition? Still haven’t gotten any feedback from the agency, so I don’t know for sure …. Anyway, it’s always good to go on interviews to keep yourself sharp, and even if I didn’t land that particular position, it’s a positive to have another agency in my corner…

Funny piece by my pal Kathryn in the Stowe Reporter last week called Typing Twisters in which yours truly gets a mention. We were both ace transcriptionists when we started out at The Wall Street Transcript back in the late ‘80s before becoming star copy editors, and here Kathryn recounts the trials and tribulations involved in attempting to capture the garbled words & thoughts of pseudo-literate business types down on paper in some agreed-upon semblance of accepted coherence. Wasn’t always easy but was often hilarious, such that to amuse ourselves we kept a running log for the best/worst/most egregious transgressions of logic/taste/intelligence. I remember some of my favorites to this day, such as the time a typically syntax-challenged financial analyst predicted that “70 percent of every person in America will enter a McDonald’s this year” -- while I guess the other 30 percent would just remain outside until the meal was finished. Good stuff.

Everybody Loved Melman

Calvin DeForest, better known to millions of David Letterman Show viewers as Larry "Bud" Melman, has passed away at age 85. Probably the third funniest person ever associated with the show after Chris Elliott and Letterman himself, he was one of those rare guys who got a laugh just by showing up. Honestly, I thought he had already left us years ago, because it's been so long since we heard anything at all about him. In the 1980s I was working a night job where I used to get home too wired to go to sleep right away, so I would watch Letterman (which in those days was 90 minutes and ran after Johnny Carson's Tonight Show from 12:30 to 2:00AM on NBC), and then two episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 2:00-3:00AM.

Larry "Bud" Melman gave me and a lot of other people a lot of laughs with wacky gags like Toast on a Stick and handing out hot towels to tourists at Port Authority. Rest in peace, Bud. Your place in showbiz history is assured.

Monday Has A Feel

Like most intelligent people, I hate car commercials, but every once in a while they surprise me and use music from another time, another place that shows up nowhere else. I don't remember which automobile it was for, but surely I wasn't dreaming that I heard the obscure Feelies song Let's Go used in one commercial, and where else are you gonna hear the brilliant Start! by the Jam, which was used in yet another spot. I guess it just means that advertising copy-writers with better-than-average musical taste have come of age, even if their work ultimately does little more than perpetuate the silly American myth of the open road ... Also heard a college band striking up a big band version of the White Stripes' Seven Nation Army as an NCAA basketball game cut to a timeout. Oh those kooky college kids! I guess nothing should surprise anymore when the Ramones' classic Blitzkrieg Bop -- a song written by four misfit punk rockers from Forest Hills, Queens -- has become an official jock anthem played at sports stadia across the country, drained of all context and meaning -- not that we're talking George Gershwin-style lyrical prowess here. But still...

Also annoying me is the premise behind the new Adam Sandler crapfest, Reign Over Me. (Even the title is tiresomely derivative, meant to conjure up classic rock connotations!). After critics universally and deservedly panned Sandler's last few mall-plex offerings, mindless drivel like Click and Spanglish, it seems that as a further affront to good taste, this dopey non-talent decided to make his next role a character whose family was killed in 9/11! You know, just to make it almost impossibly tasteless for critics to root against him. Real subtle! I guess the concentration camp survivor and man who was sexually abused as a child are awaiting the green light for summer and holiday releases. What a fucking cheesy putz this guy turned into! Don't worry, I'm sure enough sheep will turn out to make this movie another blockbuster. Way to go, America!

Took the train in from Astoria a little later than usual today for my afternoon shift here at LT, which is nice once in a while because the trains are empty, and it reminds me of my college days when I would roll out of bed for an afternoon or evening class. But then around 30th Avenue a guy comes into the train that looks exactly like Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, just when that group's Holiday is playing on my MP3. The guy's got the look down, from the spiky jet black hair to the eye makeup and multiple facial piercings. Only thing is, the guy's maneuvering on crutches and he's got only one good leg, the other's just a bare stump. He's the kind of down-on-his-luck guy who I usually would throw a buck to, but this week I'm too broke even for that small act of charity. Wish him well, though I never heard his pitch through the noise...

Was reading about the French Revolution the other day on Wikipedia and came upon this fun fact. After a person was guillotined, the head was usually held up the crowd, I guess to verify that the sentence had indeed been carried out and to satisfy the bloodlust of the citizenry. But the interesting thing is that technically the head or brain was still alive and maintained consciousness for something like 7 seconds. Talk about the ultimate out-of-body experience! ... It has been my experience that most corporate and government spokesmen seem to be named Greg or Scott ... Remember the good old days when we all sat around debating whether George W. Bush was really as ignorant and uninformed as he was being portrayed in the media. Well, of course we now can say with surety that he was and is. But no sooner have we established that certainty beyond all doubt than recent events force us to sit around and question whether Dubya is as absolutely ape-shit crazy as he regularly appears to be. Is it the brain damage from years of alcohol and drug abuse? The personal enablers in the White House that shield him from outside criticism? The small circle of sycophants who still salute his every move? Whatever the real reason, alas, that too seems to be the case, if not the cause, fueling the failure-ridden machinations behind our consensus worst president ever.

Bring Me The Head of Alberto Gonzales. Besieged and belittled at every turn, it's doubtful that even in Bush's world of merit-less crony government appointments, the diminutive Torquemada can survive calls for his resignation much longer. With his single qualification being a stint as Bush's personal attorney, where his biggest worry was covering up DUI charges for the future governor, Gonzales was in way over his head. He will be remembered for questioning whether certain ("quaint") provisions of the Geneva conventions still apply to the U.S. in its war on terror. In light of the new scandal over the mass firing of U.S. Attorneys, possibly engineered at the highest levels of the White House, we're likely to see some interesting testimony on Capitol Hill thanks to two words no Republican operative will want to hear over the next two years: Subpoena Power. Democrats may not be able to cut funding for the war, but at least their oversight responsibility and ability to hold Congressional hearings will shine some much needed light on prior misdeeds of this corrupt administration. Karl Rove under oath, squirming like a pig in a tuxedo and sweating like Mike Tyson at a spelling bee? Priceless...

And it's not only Democrats trying to get to the bottom of Attorneygate; courageous Republicans (courageous defined as those running for reelection in 2008) see this incident for the embarrassment it is and have joined the chorus calling for Gonzo's cabeza. New Hampshire Senator John Sununu was the first GOP-er to go on record as saying it's time for Gonzo to go. I couldn't stand his dad, who was White House Chief of Staff under Bush 41, but apparently Sununu Jr. has a moral compass. Sununu Sr., an insufferably arrogant prick in the mold of Newt Gingrich, was forced to resign due to his personal misuse of government aircraft who thought his every utterance was brilliant as the host of Crossfire in the 1990s. The son is not as rigidly beholden to the party and a cursory glance at his Wikipedia bio demonstrates a willingness to stand away from the pack.

One question: if you wear two American flag pins, one on each suit lapel, does that make you twice as patriotic as the next guy? Thought so ... Did Pete Rose really think he would make it all better just by admitting he bet on every Cincinnati Reds game one season? He loved and trusted "his guys" so much that he had to drop a nightly Nickel or a Dime on them -- you know, to show 'em some love. As much as I loved the way he played the game, now I see what a clueless loudmouth he's turned out to be ... Just when you thought you've seen/heard it all comes word that the folks at Chiquita Bananas, my personal favorite brand of the popular yellow fruit, has been in cahoots with right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia, apparently paying almost $2 million in protection money from 1997-2004. That can't be good for anyone, except it's big business as usual and brings to mind how large a role companies like United Fruit played in American foreign policy in the 1940s and 1950s, demonstrating how neocolonialism and multinationalism were often one and the same back in the good old days of American capitalism. Indeed the fates of these nations' political system were literally inextricably linked with the huge U.S. companies who were calling the shots back then; it wasn't a big reach when you consider that how intertwined big business was with the CIA and vice versa. According to Wikipedia,

"In 1954, the Guatemalan government of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán was toppled by a group of Guatemalan army officers who invaded from Honduras with the covert assistance of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (see Operation PBSUCCESS). Before that, the directors of UFCO had lobbied to convince the Truman and Eisenhower administrations that Colonel Arbenz intended to align Guatemala with the Soviet bloc. Besides the disputed issue of Arbenz's allegiance to Communism, the directors of UFCO may have feared Arbenz's stated intention of purchasing uncultivated land from the company (at the value declared in tax returns) and redistributing it among Native American peasants. The American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was an avowed opponent of Communism whose law firm had represented United Fruit. His brother Allen Dulles was the director of the CIA. The brother of the Assistant Secretary of State for InterAmerican Affairs John Moors Cabot had once been president of United Fruit."

And that's just the history of one country. Do you think Chiquita paid all that money just for protection or security, or was it more likely paid to discourage the formation of trade unions, workers' rights, etc., by any means necessary. The U.S. has a long, sordid history of blatantly intervening in the affairs of other countries in the region, from Guatemala to Colombia to Nicaragua, Haiti and Dominican Republic, using the CIA and Marines as an international police force to keep the native populations in line. For instance, curious readers may wonder what the Marines were doing in Managua taking sides in the Nicaraguan civil war in the 1930s if not to ensure that the right side won, ensuring another colony remained receptive to the dictates of almighty Yankee dollar. That's what the Clash were referring to when they sang:
"Yankee dollar talk To the dictators of the world In fact it's giving orders And they can't afford to miss a word!" im+so+bored+with+the+u+s+a

So the next time you hear the catchy Chiquita Banana jingle, perhaps these new lyrics are more suitable for the current situation:
"We are Chiquita Banana & we're here to say,
All you left-wing guerillas get out of our way,
'Cause us yankee gringos we made sure to pay,
Those right-wing death squads so you better obey..."

More truth in advertising from the good folks of Madison Avenue!

Remember to tune into the Lionel Show weeknights on WOR-710AM at 9:00PM. For now he still carries the WardensWorld seal of approval and money-back guarantee.

Must-Read Reading

"I took an oath of office to the Constitution, I didn't take an oath of office to my party or my president."
--Chuck Hagel, December 21, 2005, on his opposition to renewing the Patriot Act



Before we get to the important recent political articles you might have missed that are making news, you should peruse this brilliant take-down of the Oprah Myth on Salon entitled Oprah's Ugly Secret from Peter Birkenhead; it encapsulates everything that I've detested about the insufferable daytime talk show queen and her Bono-like attempts to make the world safe for upscale consumerism. Choice cut: "One of Oprah's signature gimmicks has been giving stuff away to her audience ("giving" here means announcing the passing of stuff from corporate sponsors to audience members), most notably in a popular segment called "My Favorite Things." These bits have revealed an Oprah who truly revels in consumer culture, and who can seem astonishingly oblivious to the way most people live and what they can afford. She seems to celebrate every event and milestone with extravagant stuff, indeed to not know how to celebrate without it."
Read full article here

Regular readers of WardensWorld will not be surprised to discover that we have settled on a presidential candidate for '08 and his name is Chuck Hagel, the Republican Senator from Nebraska. Now all we need is for Hagel to formally announce his plans. That decision could come as early as today, and it may reveal his intention to mount an Independent run for president outside of the two major parties. The man has the one quality that can't be focus-tested or polled or mass-marketed -- a little thing called integrity. Read this terrific profile from Esquire.com by Charles P. Pierce and see if you're not on the bandwagon. The guy really detests Dubya as much as the rest of us, and has the backbone to go against the misguided dictates of his own party, which has been hijacked by nefarious neocons like Karl Rove for far too long. I would not bet against this guy, a true war hero with the medals to prove it. And you get the feeling that if Rove & Co. tried to "Swift Boat" this guy like they did Kerry, Hagel would be waiting for them the very next day outside their offices, ready to go mano-a-mano, and what happened next wouldn't be pretty for the War Party. Choice cut: "He is developing, almost on the fly and without perceptible calculation, a vocabulary and a syntax through which to express the catastrophe of what followed after. Rough, and the furthest thing from glib, he's developing a voice that seems to be coming from somewhere else, distant and immediate all at once."
Read in full here

Nobody in Washington journalism has the government sources of Seymour Hersh, and he puts them to good use once again in a New Yorker piece on the Bush regime's efforts to rev up for war in Iran entitled The Redirection. Not content to break one entire country into pieces beyond repair, it seems unhinged neocons like Elliott Abrams are once again shortsightedly focusing on setting the entire Middle East region ablaze, and are currently forming shaky, volatile alliances across religious and political lines, to the point where you get the uneasy feeling that everything these guys touch will turn from bad to worse. It's a typical head spinner from Hersh, such that when you reach the end of the article you will be more confused and alarmed than when you began reading it: "Still, the Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction of the President. In recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours."
Article in full here

Speaking of head-shaking, the Counterpunch.org issue of March 9/11 brings us a typically incisive interview with the one and only Noam Chomsky, bane of conservative ideologues everywhere. Under the heading "War, Neoliberalism and the 21st Century," Sameer Dossani chats with Chomsky about his new book, Failed States, subtitled The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.

Also worth checking out is this Chomsky article from the Guardian UK, here reprinted on Truthout, which makes the simple but undeniable point that, yes, the war in Iraq and the greater Middle East is, was, has been and always will be all about the oil, stupid: Read here

Justin Raimondo, perhaps my favorite current political writer, brings us this gem about Chuck Hagel, called Hagel Against the War Party. Raimondo has been using his column on antiwar.com to rail against the war from the right, as he remains steadfastly opposed to this disastrous war of empire which goes against everything traditional conservatives have stood for. He expects Hagel to make an announcement regarding his candidacy as early as today, and Raimondo typically cuts to the heart of what a Hagel campaign will signify as set against the backdrop of Washington politics: "Hagel insists he's not an "antiwar" candidate, but this is precisely what I mean about the effective stereotyping of all opposition to the neocons' foreign policy: critiques of the war not steeped in either pacifism or blame-America-first leftism are simply inconceivable. What Hagel doesn't seem to understand, quite yet, is that his campaign will do much to erase the red/blue paradigm at a time when it is doing the most damage possible. But that's okay: historic figures almost never comprehend the impact or larger meaning of their actions, except in retrospect. That's why we have political analysts and pundits."

If Raimondo is my first go-to guy for a spirited opposition columnist, then William Rivers Pitt, more of a left-wing firebrand in the mold of Hunter Thompson and, even more fittingly, Thomas Paine -- two righteous pamphleteers with whom he has much in common -- is my second choice for inspired polemical. You can find his work on truthout.org, where he writes twice or thrice a week. From his most recent column on the conviction of Scooter Libby, one of the Iraq invasion's mendacious architects, last week: "The lies promulgated by Mr. Libby led directly to the deaths of 3,185 American soldiers and the wounding of between 47,000 and 53,000 more soldiers. This amounts to between a third and a fourth of the entire active combat force of the United States military. The lies promulgated by Mr. Libby led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the maiming of thousands more, and the creation of a sectarian civil war in that nation whose effects will be generational in impact." What sets Pitt apart is a level of sheer outrage you won't usually find in the corporately beholden mainstream press. That, and his colonial sounding name, which seems to come straight from the pages of American Revolutionary War history.
William Rivers Pitt archive

A book that puts the fate of the Middle East into greater historical perspective is Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong, The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East. Lewis chronicles the mindset behind the region's fall from a leading scientific civilization to one that has consistently lagged the West for centuries. At one point the Middle East was at the frontier of human knowledge, only to become what is today "a poor and ignorant backwater" dominated by shabby tyrannies. The problem simplified is that after the rise of Islam, few in the East looked to Europe and the West for new developments, content in the belief that religion contained the answer for all of life's questions. Lewis relates how travel to the West was a rarity among Middle Easterners, while Europeans continued to trek East out of curiosity and a search for knowledge. A typical example is the invention of the clock and other time-keeping machinery. The Middle East in short had no interest in either using or developing such external devices, instead relying on more natural methods to keep time. The overarching point Lewis makes is that developments in the West were of no interest to the region unless they could be used to a narrow military or political advantage. The best parts of the book were the excerpts from the journals and diaries of contemporaries. A short book (200 pages) well worth reading for perspective on the current crisis.
Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong

Somehow the Lewis book led me in the direction of another ancient civilization, this one very much in the news of late: The Spartans. I am halfway through Paul Cartledge's masterful World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece -- just before the Persians invade the Greek mainland -- and was all set to check out the new movie 300, but for the uniformly atrocious reviews it was receiving. So I will pass on that movie, which really looks more like a video game than a movie you might actually learn something from, and instead hunt down the 1962 movie called The 300 Spartans. The clash between the invading Persians and the undermanned Spartans has been called the most important battle in the history of mankind, and lest you judge that sentiment a smidgen too hyperbolic (some still stubbornly consider the 1983 U.S. invasion of the tiny island nation of Grenada more significant), consider the consequences had the Greeks not prevailed in 480BC against King Xerxes & company in the landmark Battle of Thermopylae where 300 Spartan warriors and 700 Thespian volunteers held off an invading force estimated by modern historians to be around 100,000 men minimum to as many as 300,000 maximum. We might all be eating falafels instead of souvlakis in downtown Astoria but for the heroism of the proud Spartans, who successfully bought time for the Athenian navy to assemble the massive fleet (380 ships) that would ultimately repel the invaders in the decisive Battle of Salamis. But the best part of the Spartan story is finding out little tidbits like how the warriors would perform calisthenics and then meticulously comb their long hair before a battle, unsettling their enemies in the process, as well as the great flashes of Laconic wit uttered memorably on the battlefield. For instance, when Xerxes forcefully commanded the Spartans to lay down their arms, the Spartan leader Leonidas simply responded: "Come take them..." Man, here it is 2,500 years later and I still get chills just reading that line!
* * * * * * * * *
Finally, we here at WardensWorld would be remiss (negligent, derelict) if we didn't note the passing of one of our leading progressive voices. In late January of this year, the irreplaceable Molly Ivins lost her long battle with cancer, one of the few foes she took on and didn't prevail against. In an age where the silly pun-making of a Maureen Dowd passes for political commentary, it is worth looking back and saluting a true warrior in the battle against the reactionary conservatism that has reached its unfortunate pinnacle in the power grabbing of the Bush Crime Family. We lost one of the good ones just when we needed it most.

And it's also worth noting that it's having people like Molly Ivins on your side of the battle line that lets you know that somehow you're on the side of common decency and justice for the underdog, while the other side is populated by shrill, high-pitched shrews like Anne Coulter and Michelle Malkin. She saw through the current resident of the White House as the conniving, lying fratboy he always was, and now the rest of the nation has slowly come around to her way of thinking, as evidenced by the overwhelmingly poor approval ratings garnered by Shrub, as she was fond of calling Bush Junior. One of a long line of great Texas populists in the mold of folks like Jim Hightower and Bill Moyers, and fierce right up to the end, as you can see by her very last column, which urged concerned citizens to stand up against yet another troop surge. Her final words are worth repeating in full, and should serve as inspiration for progressives and free thinkers everywhere:

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'"

Amen to that, Molly. We know that wherever you are, someone's surely getting an earful right about now. We're very much the better for having known you.

Vermont Culture Alert

My old pal Kathryn Drury, who worked with me at The Wall Street Transcript for years and years spanning the late 1980s and most of the 1990s (including our long stint together at the insane asylum ... er, office -- populated by characters like Cool Cal, the Mar Woman, Judith Rulerhands, located on the 19th floor of 99 Wall), relocated a few years back to her home state of Vermont. Greenpoint, Brooklyn, will never be the same, but it seems New York's loss has become New England's gain, as Ms. Drury has been busy writing novels and, as I just learned, has become quite the busy little feature writer for two local newspapers, the Waterbury Record and the Stowe Reporter. Very cool. It seems like only yesterday that our Short Story Club was in full swing, the two of us exchanging stories each week and then meeting a few days later at the Pearl Street Diner for some constructive critiques over a juicy cow-burger. One of my all-time favorite people, it really makes me happy to see her in print, because I always knew she had the talent. I was always envious of her then because her short stories were usually way better than mine. Now I'm happy that I can keep up with her long distance through the miracle of the World Wide Web.

Astoria Culture Alert

My friend and fellow Astoria denizen Dan Damiano has a new play in production, Dreams of Friendly Aliens, which I hope to check out soon. It starts previews on March 10 and runs thru April 1 at the Dorothy Strelsin Theater on West 36th Street. Dan is a huge Buffalo Bills fan and we all know that can't be easy, but playwriting and acting are his true loves. His day job coincidentally is at College Board, a place where I've often worked as a freelancer as you know. Maybe he can write a play about it all someday. But seriously, check out the interview he did with the Abingdon Theatre Newsletter. Good luck, Dan, and don't forget your helmet on opening night like Thurman Thomas at the Super Bowl!

Random Shuffle Mania

Inspired by John Salmon over at the Mystic Chords blog, I have decided to offer my version of his iPod shuffle, although in my case it's more like the MP3 shuffle, as my player is an iRiver direct encoding sumbitch, but it's only 1 GB, holding about 310-320 total songs, so space is obviously at a premium and therefore a song has to really deliver to make it and, more importantly, must constantly prove itself to keep its spot in the rotation. For your musical edification, here's the first 10 tunes that pop up randomly, giving you just a taste of the tunes that accompany me on my daily rounds. The Onion also does something similar called Random Rules, whereby they get people even more famous than me to reveal which songs come up on their very own iPods when they hit random. The results are often revealing if not fascinating, but they usually only highlight the first 5-6 songs and then riff a little about them. For instance, who knew that Weird Al Yankovic would have The Beatles, The Rutles, Hole, Nirvana, Alanis Morrissette and Frank Zappa, but then again that sounds about right. In my own case, we're not trying to demonstrate how hip, cool or cutting edge my musical tastes are--that's a given that's already been long established here at WardensWorld (or not)--but merely to give you a rare behind the scenes glimpse into what makes me tick musically. Let's roll...

1 Love Struck Baby - Stevie Ray Vaughan
One of SRV's shorter, more poppy tunes, my second favorite song of his after Pride & Joy. The man died in 1990 at age 35, yet except for Jimi Hendrix, no one has or is likely to surpass his sheer mastery of the electric guitar.

2 Ball & Biscuit - White Stripes
This song contains one of the longer solo breaks from the Jack White ouvre. The guy can play the fuck out of the guitar, and it's not his fault that we find ourselves suddenly inundated by demented blues-drenched imitators like the Von Bondies. Which is not such a bad thing anyway, as any pop music movement that takes attention away from hideous hip-hop horrible-ness is OK in my book. There, I said it.

3 Monkey Man - The Specials
Borrowed the first Specials CD from Johnny Starr and just put the whole masterpiece of an album onto my iRiver. Impossible to overstate how great this record still sounds, so I won't even try, except to say that all this record did was kick off a ska revival that featured incredible bands like the Selecter, Madness, English Beat, Bodysnatchers. Plus the band set an example of black-white harmony (dubbing their record label Two-Tone) at a time of strained race relations in England. That's not a bad little legacy. I never caught the Specials live in their prime, I remember getting turned away from a sold-out show at Hurrah's, but did see a reunited incarnation of the band in '94 at Irving Plaza, and I will tell you that every single person in the audience sang every word to every song, and you could see the pleasantly shocked looks on the band member's faces as the sheer joy of the music was reflected back at them. Unforgettable!

4 Teenage Lobotomy - Ramones
I always felt that teenage lobotomies were among the worst kinds of lobotomies.

5 Nantucket Sleighride - Mountain
Mountain specialized in intricate, melodic heavy metal music, and this song is a good example from the band that's still best known for FM radio staple Mississippi Queen.

6 Buffalo Soldier - Bob Marley
Not one of my absolute Marley favorites, but one of about 20 Marley gems to make the cut. The song, from the album Legend, is about the African-Americans who served in the U.S. Army after the Civil War. Borrowed from (and returned to) Bobby Brain. In fact, all of the music on my MP3 is stuff I borrowed from other people or took out of the library, so as not to play out my own CD collection. Yeah, I got this whole "life" thing down to a science.

7 Darts Of Pleasure - Franz Ferdinand
One of the many "nouveau wave" bands like Arctic Monkeys, the Strokes and Interpol that are busy replicating the twitchy, nervous catchiness of original new wave punk bands from the late 1970s, such as the Feelies, Speedies and Joy Division. This album at first sounds derivative but grows on you steadily, and I always turn up the volume just a little more when a FF song pops up. What greater praise can you give?

8 When You're A Jet - West Side Story
Don't usually do show tunes, but almost every song on this cast album from the Broadway play brings a smile to my face, or at least to the relevant parts of my mouth. The record also includes gems like America, Cool and Gee Officer Krupke, although Jet is the only one still on my player.

9 Sway - Rolling Stones
I didn't plan on putting so many Stones tunes on my MP3 (about 25 total I would guess); it just evolved that way. This song is from 1971's Sticky Fingers, and its opening lines are still killer:
"Did you ever wake up to find
A day that broke up your mind
Destroyed your notion of circular time."


10 I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys
Found this CD at my local Astoria library. They remind me of a punkier, more uptempo Oasis, and this song would be great to dance to if in fact I still hit the dance floor. I don't see that happening any time soon, so covertly bopping my head to this song's herky-jerky rhythms is probably as close as I'll get to showing off the moves that once made me such a legend at long-gone venues like Heat, Hurrah's and the Peppermint Lounge. And that's a shame on so many levels.

That was fun, man. Feel free to contribute your own random shuffles or just favorite portable music. I'm talkin' to you: Johnny Star, JimiTheGreek, Tony Trent, Urb, Gatt, GonzoVin ... you know who you are. Get involved!

See also:

Indie Vids