Removing All Doubts

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

THIS GREAT OLD ADAGE, usually attributed to Abraham Lincoln, has been consistently violated lately in American political discourse, both by a chronically misinformed citizenry and an out-of-touch punditry -- nowhere more so than when it comes to the phenomenon known as the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party. There were rallies all over the country on Tax Day, and the mainstream media is finally taking a good hard look at what it is, why it is, and just who is attracted to its virulently anti-liberal and anti-government sentiments.

Toward this end, on April 15 the New York Times assembled a small gaggle of commentators online, charged with getting to the bottom of What Tea Party Backers Want. Besides giving a good cup of tea a bad name, we know what they don't want -- to shut up and accept the results of the November 2008 election -- and we can guess by their all-white composition and more blatant displays of racism that they're not too keen in general on a black man in the White House. As expected, the "experts" gathered here are think-tankers and academics -- with some going on record as believing the Tea Party will have a Ross Perot-like impact on the upcoming midterm elections and further out in the 2012 presidential campaign. Others make way too much of a recent poll indicating a "significant percentage" of so-called Independents and Democrats are Tea Party members; and a "longtime political consultant" called Douglas Schoen thinks they're more diverse than they're portrayed and that it's somehow "extraordinary that close to 1 in 5 Americans call themselves Tea Party supporters." Why? That means over 80% thankfully are NOT identifying with Tea Party simpletons!

I'm not a longtime anything except old, but I think if anything there will be a backlash against any politician getting too close to this lunatic fringe.

But my candidate for hands-down dumbest take so far on the nascent-but-already-irritating Tea Party was a March 4th column by David Brooks, which found the Times' token conservative digging at the dreaded Pop Sociology well again. His modus operandi in such pieces is to come to a conclusion first, then retrofit the "facts" that fit his thesis. Last week, for instance, in a column titled "Relax, We'll Be Fine," he uses a few stats about population and income trends to back up a feel-good notion that "the U.S. is on the verge of a demographic, economic and social revival." None of it rings true, with the following paragraph an example of what might best be described as Brooks' very un-Toffler-like brand of future schlock on display:

"As the world gets richer, demand will rise for the sorts of products Americans are great at providing — emotional experiences. Educated Americans grow up in a culture of moral materialism; they have their sensibilities honed by complicated shows like “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” and “Mad Men,” and they go on to create companies like Apple, with identities coated in moral and psychological meaning, which affluent consumers crave."

Brooks' whole essence of American Exceptionalism, like most sheltered conservatives, can be boiled down to, If Americans are doing it, ultimately it's good for the world, because Americans always mean well. That's the only way I can make any sense of what he's saying.

He's been on an awful negative roll lately, just mailing in column after clueless column. And people are noticing. On April 7 Brooks reflected on the NCAA Championship game, using the prism of "spoiled" Duke versus "underdog" Butler to postulate on Bigger Issues in American society. Not a bad concept, but Brooks uses it to hammer home his point that the rich and successful are who they are for a reason: they work harder than the poor. It was great to see Matt Taibbi calling him out for this elitist rubbish on his excellent True / Slant blog. In "Let Them Eat Work," Taibbi as you might expect does not hold back:

"I would give just about anything to sit David Brooks down in front of some single mother somewhere who’s pulling two shitty minimum-wage jobs just to be able to afford a pair of $19 Mossimo sneakers at Target for her kid, and have him tell her, with a straight face, that her main problem is that she doesn’t work as hard as Jamie Dimon.

Only a person who has never actually held a real job could say something like this. There is, of course, a huge difference between working 80 hours a week in a profession that you love and which promises you vast financial rewards, and working 80 hours a week digging ditches for a septic-tank company, or listening to impatient assholes scream at you at some airport ticket counter all day long, or even teaching disinterested, uncontrollable kids in some crappy school district with metal detectors on every door."

But back to Brooks and his observation that the current Tea Party = the 1960s Antiwar movement. That claim is somehow even more offensive than his usual outlandish and off-base flights from a reality-based universe -- which obviously is saying something.

A proposal this bad needs a catchy title to match -- and "The Wal-Mart Hippies" does the trick. I'm shaking my head as I type the words here, but Brooks' childish position, that "The Tea Party’s raging against the machine echoes an older radicalism from the opposite end of the political spectrum," is absurd on the face of it. All too typically, Brooks presents little to no evidence to back it up -- making his column the reliably fact-free space on the New York Times' op-ed page that it's become.

After noting that both movements aim to "return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution," he concedes there are many differences, including one being of the right, the other the left, one motivated by a war, the other by government spending. But then he plows right ahead toward his conclusion, claiming that "the similarities are more striking than the differences." This is where an editor should have shot down the idea before Brooks wasted everybody's time, because he uses the rest of the piece to prove no such thing.

Again wildly throwing around concepts in the hope that a few of these stereotypes might stick, Brooks finds great significance that both groups believe in what he calls "mass innocence," defined as: "Both movements are built on the assumption that the people are pure and virtuous and that evil is introduced into society by corrupt elites and rotten authority structures." What mass movement has members that don't believe in this? It's like a horoscope in that it's so general that it applies to everyone from Jehovah's Witnesses to the Black Panthers.

The remainder of the column is filled with gems like "members of both movements have a problem with authority" and want to "destroy the corrupt structures and defeat the establishment." Trees died for these observations, to paraphrase one legendary negative book review.

His tiresome conclusion is that the Tea Party will eventually self-destruct because they're shortsighted like '60s radicals were and therefore are not true conservatives, because "to remedy our fallen condition, conservatives believe in civilization — in social structures, permanent institutions and just authorities, which embody the accumulated wisdom of the ages and structure individual longings." See, according to David Brooks, the Left blew it back then "through their own imprudence, self-righteousness and naïve radicalism." I guess the Left just didn't see the "wisdom" of the Vietnam War which the "just authorities" of the time like Nixon and Kissinger were insisting was worth 55,000 dead Americans to preserve civilization as we know it. Glad that's been cleared up for us.

This March 4th column drew 261 comments on the Times' website, a healthy amount of traffic but nowhere near the 500-600 other opinion pieces regularly attract. (Today's Frank Rich column for instance already has 580 comments.) That alone should tell his editors something. Maybe it's time to give someone else his valuable op-ed real estate. It has to be at least on the table if there's anyone on the ball minding the store.

Quite a few rightfully indignant readers responded forcefully to Brooks' brand of hogwash, some of them upset that Brooks would even make such a boneheaded comparison. Like all good writing, I only wish I'd have thought of some of these Comments first, but it's enough to know others are thinking along the same lines. Here's a few choice ones that show there are plenty of people not buying what Brooks is selling:

We need a serious analysis of the Tea Party folks, but we won't be getting it from Mr. Brooks' pop sociology. The inchoate, but real and dangerous, rage of the marginalized white working-class grows out of 30 years of working harder and getting nowhere while the top 1% has grown ever richer and, alarmingly, less white--symbolized by Obama's election. As ever, Brooks wants to analyze American society without mentioning class or race, and so misses the target by a mile...

...There is little, if anything, about the Tea Partiers that isn't ugly. All too often, stupid, simple people, looking for simple solutions and simple slogans - being manipulated and courted by demagogues, dolts, and one very dangerous dame. And by the way - the New Left of the 60's touched an entire generation, and encompassed not only the politics of the major political parties - but also social justice movements for women, Afro-Americans, Native Americans, Indigenous peoples worldwide,as well as the oppressed and the exploited everywhere...

...David, the fact that The Tea Party Movement has people on Medicare and Medicaid complaining about the government's involvement in health-reform sums up their unbelievable (and frightening) intellectual ineptitude and proves that they truly lack any organized goals, objectives or ideas to have a legitimate debate. So I think it's shamefully egregious to compare the followers of MLK Jr. and others who championed civil and social freedoms, equality, love and acceptance - to 'people' as egotistical, zealous and uneducated as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and their Fox News addicted, Tea Party zombies.

Tea Party Tempest

ALTHOUGH I ENJOY ridiculing the Tea Party halfwits as much as the next sentient being, let's be clear that the movement as a whole is no joke. 5,000 of them showed up in Boston to see their patron saint of cluelessness, Sarah Palin, regurgitate the same old talking points. Palin like Glenn Beck is dangerous only because people take what she has to say seriously -- despite or who knows anymore maybe because of her disturbing propensity to make things up as she goes along.

In Washington today, attention junkie Michele Bachmann went for the jugular, using rhetoric loaded with code words to make her point: "We're on to this gangster government. I say it's time for these little piggies to go home ... We need you to take out some of these bad guys." Would it surprise anyone who's read about these meetings to discover that Tea Party loons could be heard chanting, "There's a communist in the White House!" Or that a "fair tax" type would be advocating, "We have got to take the country back by taking back the money they take from us" -- not bothering to explain who would be left to pay for a military budget that incredibly, obscenely is more than every other nation on the planet combined. After all, it takes a lot of tax revenue to win hearts and minds. But sometimes we do much more harm than good in places like Iraq, now seven years after the invasion. And you can make a strong case that we've doing a lot more harm than good lately to the people we're supposed to be helping in Afghanistan, to the point where you can't help but think it's high time for the U.S. to get the hell out of both countries. But the Tea Party loudmouths selectively fixate their outrage elsewhere. As an AP story about the rallies put it:

"Lost in the rhetoric was that taxes have gone down under Obama. Congress has cut individuals' federal taxes for this year by about $173 billion, leaving Americans with a lighter load despite nearly $29 billion in increases by states. Obama plans to increase taxes on the wealthy to help pay for his health care overhaul and other programs."

But then again, logic, reality and reason are not the strong suits of the simpletons gathered under the Tea Party banner. Facts are not likely to get in the way any time soon where the Tea Party is concerned. Republicans now own whatever ugliness comes out of it when all the heated rhetoric brews out of control and boils over into violence. Because it's a matter of when, not if...

.

Jokers To The Right

"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-- Thomas Jefferson

I stole that great quote out of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, recommended reading for oh just about everyone alive, which I am 100 pages into now and really digging. But of course Tom could have been talking about the current state of the Republican party and its scary outer-right fringes in the form of Hate Radio and the equally loud and obnoxious Tea Party.

I don't know what disturbs me more -- the nerve of these people to pretend we didn't just have an election, or their frightening ignorance on most issues. And let's just say their spellin' ain't so hot either, if the once-fine art of sign writing is any indication. If ever a political movement needed a roving proofreader, by golly these Tea Party folk will have to do until something worse comes along.

Guam Overboard!

BY THE WAY, HANK, the next time you feel like pontificating publicly on a subject which you know absolutely nothing about, it might be a good idea to assign one of your staff to at least print out the pertinent Wikipedia entry. If you had done even that bare modicum of due diligence, you would have discovered basic facts like the island of Guam is 30 miles long, between 4-12 miles wide, and has been inhabited, sans major geological disaster, for the last 4,000 years. That would have cut down some on your stumbling preamble, which, while masterfully demonstrating your ignorance, nevertheless pales in comparison to your beyond-ridiculous assertion that the collective weight of human beings might pose a threat to a land mass. It's a wonder Manhattan island has lasted this long, what with the millions of overweight tourists coming to the city every year.

The real story here might be how Admiral Willard keeps a straight face while the Georgia congressman floats his outlandish capsize theory: "My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize." Instead, with great restraint, Willard replies, "We don't anticipate that." Classic comeback!

Congressman Fears a Guam capsize with extra U.S. military
Link to story here













Proposed new tourism campaign: "Come to Guam, but please step lightly!"

Holy Fool

IN WHAT MIGHT INITIALLY SEEM an odd subject for a blog entry, nevertheless today I submit for your approval the case study of one garden variety New York City subway nut, a street crazy, a ranting raving rambling spewer of random nonsense. Or was there a meaning to the seeming madness...? Stay tuned or, better yet, scroll down.

Here it is a day later and I still can't quite get over the encounter with this April Fool. I was coming home on the W-train early yesterday afternoon when he got on at Queensboro Plaza and got off at Astoria Blvd. just 5 stations later -- yet in between he carried on a nonstop soliloquy that entertained and/or bewildered half the train car depending on your tolerance for this sort of behavior. The thing is, this guy wasn't rambling at all, but extremely focused and obsessed, loud but not threatening. After a few minutes of his monologue it dawned on me that he was in all earnestness carrying on a conversation with Christopher Columbus in the form of his statue located on a small traffic island outside the Astoria Blvd. station, at turns imploring and exhorting the legendary explorer to:

"GUIDE ME HOME, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, YOU GREAT EXPLORER OF THE SEAS, WHICH SIDE WILL YOU BE ON, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, HOW WILL I FIND YOU ON THIS HOLY THURSDAY, O GREAT ONE, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS WHO WITH THREE SHIPS FOUND THE NEW WORLD, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, WHO KNEW THE WORLD WAS ROUND WHEN EVERYONE THOUGHT IT WAS FLAT, THEY ALL DOUBTED YOU. GUIDE ME CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS TO YOUR SIDE, TAKE ME HOME. HOW WILL I FIND YOU, IT'S SUCH A LONG WAY, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, WHO WAS A NICE GUY, WHICH SIDE WILL YOU BE ON, HOW WILL I FIND YOU..."

This went on the entire time, with absolutely no break in the "conversation" as he faced the doors of the train, looking out, I would guess hoping for a glimpse of his hero at the earliest possible moment. Kids were moving closer just to hear what this guy was talking about. I used my cell phone to surreptitiously film three 15-second videos of this guy, but even though he was only about five feet away, it was still too far to pick up anything more than a low rumble with a few distinctly audible CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUSes, from a grand total of at least 100 mentions of his name during the short ride.

He was a tall white guy about 50, his clothes slightly disheveled but clean so not homeless. From behind I could see his glasses: huge square frames last popular circa 1979, and dirty lenses so enormous they should have come with a pair of venetian blinds or even windshield wipers. When he got on the train he was already carrying on a conversation so at first I thought he might be talking into one of those pitiful Bluetooth earpieces. But it became obvious after a minute that this guy had no need for a cell phone, the Internet, cable TV or for that matter friends.

Sure enough he got off at Astoria Blvd., mere steps away from his destination. Not to get all Oliver Sacks on you here, but I think some of his behavior might stem from somebody close to him, his mom maybe, insulting him recently; patronizingly or condescendingly asking him if he could manage to find the Columbus statue off the train stop as if were an imbecile, and now he was lashing out at that person publicly via his strange, sarcastic imprecations to old Chris. I think that's what his monologue was really all about. Or maybe he was just off his meds. Either way, if he gets this worked up about tiny Columbus Square, I hope he never finds out about the Monument in Columbus Circle or all hell might break loose.

Ducks Out Of Water

"I was the goddam manager of the fencing team. Very big deal. We'd gone in to New York that morning for the fencing meet with McBurney School. Only, we didn't make the meet. I left all the foils and equipment and stuff on the goddam subway." Catcher in the Rye


THE BIG, OFFICIAL McBurney event isn't for another month (if I decide to attend), but with a day off yesterday and a Knicks-76ers game in the hopper for the evening, nostalgia was the order of the day as my fellow "Highlander" Johnny Starr and I decided to hold our own mini reunion-slash-J.D. Salinger tribute a little ahead of time. So with that in mind, we met in front of the old landmark facade (all that's left of the grounds) on West 63rd Street at 2:30 and hit Central Park with plenty o' time to take in the sights and sounds on a summer-like pre-spring afternoon.

If you really want to know the truth of it, the school itself closed shop in 1988 -- a piece of New York history gone forever after 72 years. Ten years later they announced plans for a condo tower to be built over the original five-floor building, and sure enough in 2000 there she rose 40 floors up. There's your progress in action, yes sir.

The old YMCA is still next door, where we had our locker rooms and shared the pool, gym, etc., with everyone else. We couldn't remember if the pool was on the 3rd or 4th floor, but we did manage to walk right past the front desk and wander about, trying unsuccessfully to find the cafeteria, the barbershop where me and 3 other members of the wrestling team shaved our heads one fateful morning, the cramped stairwell all the teams ran up and down as a punishment drill for whatever infraction or shortcoming the coaches came up with...

Right across the park wall is the rock where all the heads in high school would congregate and do their thing. Beyond was the rough patch of green between softball fields where we held football practice every day. The whole field was fenced off on this day, probably being resodded, and as we later discovered, so was the entire Sheeps Meadow.

The ducks were indeed alive and well and seemingly content in the Duck Pond, perhaps distant relatives to the ones the real Holden Caulfield would have ruminated about while spending 9th and 10th grade at McBurney in the '30s. Much later in the day we stumbled on the Carousel, still a New York bargain at only 2 bucks a ride, where Catcher's pivotal scene plays out: Holden for once totally in the moment, at peace with himself, watching his sister Phoebe on the Merry Go Round.

GOT TO THE GARDEN at about 7:00, then hung out at the Play by Play watching the start of the game on the bar's big screen until John's friends showed up, which was well into the first half. We didn't actually get to our seats until well into the second half. Which was just as well, because my pathetic 76ers, clad on this night in their eyesore all-red uni's, couldn't get it done yet again, losing 92-88 -- even with the Knicks missing their two best players in David Lee and Wilson Chandler.

Desperate Measure

I SOMEHOW MISSED THIS STORY when it came out, but a blog I follow, LIQCity, had a post about it. Seems a 38-year-old Greek guy, distraught over his very sick mom, over losing his job from taking time off to be with her, over his house being foreclosed -- you know, little things like that -- leaped to his death from a Long Island City condo tower last Saturday. Anastasi Calatzis evidently posed as a prospective buyer, then, while the real estate agent was showing him an apartment on the 25th floor, he texted his brother, asking him to take care of mom, waited for the agent to turn her back, and calmly jumped from the balcony as if he had planned the whole thing out. Another overwhelmed soul overcome by unforgiving circumstances in a city that can seem heartless even in the best of times.

The LIQCity post included a link to the hideous New York Post, where, in typical nutzoid fashion, some sick fuck in the newsroom made the appalling editorial decision to accompany their story with a photo of the condo tower and a big red arrow pointing down from the 25th-floor terrace to the street below where the poor guy landed. What is the purpose of this? In case you didn't have the mental capacity to figure out which direction a person falls from 25 stories up, the Post is there to help with its asinine diagram. Anyone who buys this dying tabloid needs to have his head examined. If it was free I wouldn't use it to wipe my butt if I ran out of toilet tissue.

In a not-so-unrelated matter, I happen to detest the very idea of these Astoria high-rises and the selfish yuppie scum that dwell therein, but hey that's just me; I'm only born and raised here. I'm not breaking any new ground here, but Astoria has become inundated with these self-absorbed hipsters who think they've discovered some authentic urban landscape, who come here from their small towns trying to "make it" and within 5 minutes consider themselves native New Yorkers. I've had it with these oh-so-interesting-in-their-own-minds "indie rocker" types who live four to five to an apartment and go out in packs frequenting all their favorite new sushi joints and fusion bistros and organic health food emporiums in the neighborhood, probably looking down on all the uncultured locals. They haven't earned that right yet. If anyone's gonna look down on Astoria dumbasses, it's me. But I really don't need to see Astoria or Long Island City turning into the new Williamsburg or Park Slope. Doesn't do a damn thing for me but drive the cost of everything up.

.

I Work, Therefore I Am

TODAY MARKS A WEEK of workdays at the new, albeit temporary job. It may be premature to justify labeling me some kind of fancy Leading Economic Indicator, but the current stretch is by far my most intensive period of employment in well over a year. And that's nothing to sneeze at, mostly because with no health coverage of any kind, how can I afford to even cough?

Followers of this very space undoubtedly already know that in a previous life I worked at the same place for over 15 years -- which meant for better or worse I knew exactly where I was going almost each and every weekday morning. Technically, we're talking three different offices in three different office buildings: first 99, then 100 and finally 67 Wall Street. But my point if there is one is that freelancing is almost diametrically opposed to working at The Transcript all those years -- now day to day, even week to week I have lit'rally no idea where I'll be, and not in any existential sense either. Although sure, there's some of that too. Maybe a lot of it. But characteristically, I digress.

It's a very quiet office where I'm at now, bordering on monastic with its long stretches of silence and its hushed, almost reverential tones. I'm situated between three or four obvious veterans of the company, who speak their art department jargon over and around me. They're keeping me fairly busy with material, except for today which was deathly slow, but there's a Mac on my desk that I can use. After three days last week and two this week, still no feedback of any kind, which is unusual but not unheard of. I always like to explain my edits to the person on the other end, that's just the way I was raised.

I quickly discovered there's no affordable eats around the 60th & Madison area where I'm currently stationed, so for my first lunch excursion I foolishly grabbed a hideously lukewarm "hot" dog from a street vendor on Fifth Avenue near Central Park for 2 bucks. Next day let the record show I made my way to the more egalitarian confines of Lexington Avenue, where the food choices were sure to multiply exponentially. I was rewarded for my wandering, conveniently happening upon a thriving outpost of a dining establishment that evidently can trace its lineage back to none other than the Original, Famous Ray of antiquity. I made my way inside the bustling dining hall and took advantage of one of the house specialties: an Italian dish known as pizza pie. For a reasonable cost of two-dollars-fifty-five per individual slice, it's well worth the trip to partake of this traditional, hearty ethnic fare whilst sitting among my fellow working men and women, who I daresay are as unassuming and convivial a lot as the denizens of any large city you're likely to encounter no matter how wide your travels. In fact, I can say with some degree of certainty that this branch of the Ray's family culinary empire shall serve as my go-to locale for regular midday caloric intake.

Finally, let me close by relating to you my Readers that after one such luncheon, as I leisurely perambulated back to the office, I had a real-live celebrity sighting -- if, as I do, you consider PBS' long-time talkmeister Charlie Rose such a notable personage. Let me also pass on that as I espied Mr. Rose slowly shuffling along the Avenue, he looked quite the worse for wear, even acting a little bewildered as he piteously clutched a rather large beige valise. Then I remembered old Charlie had major heart surgery not too long ago. So there's that too.

.

Sex A Peel

I FORTUITOUSLY STUMBLED upon a small cache of Avengers DVDs at the Lincoln Center library a couple of weeks ago, and ever since it's been a veritable Emma Peel Marathon in my living room. With about 4 episodes per DVD, I've worked my way through about 8 of the hour-long shows, and see no good reason to stop now.

More to the point, is it just me or is it every male of a certain age's fantasy to be harshly interrogated at the hands -- or better yet leather boots -- of the smashing, winsome Mrs. Peel, played to perfection by Diana Rigg? I mean, WNTFL (what's not to fucking like)? With the possible exception of the sumptuous Julie Newmar as Catwoman in the 1960s Batman TV series -- also usually clad not uncoincidentally in a tight black leather jumpsuit -- nothing spoke to my already quite disturbed preadolescent psyche like watching Rigg as the take-charge Emma Peel dashing across the TV screen and beating up villains. Oh yeah and Patrick Macnee as debonair spy John Steed was pretty good too. I looked 'em up on Wikipedia and was glad to discover that he's still alive, in his late 80s now, while Diana Rigg is still kicking at 71.

I took out two DVDs from 1965 and one from '67 -- the latter episodes being in color. But you know what: I like the black & white joints much better. Now, my family didn't even have a color TV set until the early '70s, so growing up The Avengers and everything else was in black & white, and maybe that's why I prefer the series in B&W to this day. (I know there's an Avengers movie starring Uma Thurman, but Uma really doesn't do anything for me so I never got around to seeing it.)

There's one Avengers episode called A Touch of Brimstone that was supposedly banned in the U.S. for a while, yet was the most watched episode in series history in the U.K. when it aired in 1966. It's the one where Emma Peel goes undercover as a dominatrix called the Queen of Sin! AYFKM (are you fucking kidding me) or what? Coming across that episode would be akin to finding a great prize in your box of Crackerjacks when you were a little kid -- only now you have a better way to celebrate. No, believe it or not I've never been in therapy; why do you ask...?

And I didn't put together that clever little video here combining two of the finer exports 1960s England bestowed on the world: the original Avengers TV series and The Kinks. But I wish I had thought of it first. What I'd really like to find is a decent Time Machine in working order and beat it back to Swinging London a la Austin Powers. Until then I'll have to "beat it" here.

Snow Excuses

AS ANYONE WHO MADE IT outside yesterday knows, getting anywhere was a messy adventure. But even with all the snow and rain and nasty sleet, I'm still an hour early to take the Census exam, and that's after spacing out on the 7 Train and going an extra stop into Manhattan -- past Vernon-Jackson station and into Grand Central, where I cross the platform and get the 7 coming back the other way to Queens. And even though I already had a bagel and tea before getting on the train, I felt I'd earned another set of breakfast, and so I was looking forward to the second almost as much as the first, and that's saying something for a teaholic like me. I spot the Irish Center right across Jackson Avenue from where I got off the train, so I take a little walk, past a dreaded Starbucks, when I stumble on a small coffee shop tucked into a sharp corner and duck in out of the wintry goop.

I ask for my trademark English Breakfast and the hipster type behind the counter in the black beret tells me all they have is organic, which is cool by me, but then I ask how much in case it's something like 4 bucks, in which case I'd have to shoot the whole thing down. But it's 2 bucks for what turns out to be a damn fine cup of hand-brewed tea, I think that's the term she used.

The little shop was like a smaller version of my friend Kathryn's place in Greenpoint, a little cafe called Ashbox when she owned it that is itself just off the ramp of the other, Brooklyn side of the Pulaski Bridge that I could just make out across the avenue through the driving snow, which seemed to be coming down in wet sheets. I helped myself to a few free samples of a chocolate croissant on the counter, right next to a plate of Spinach and feta croissants marked $3.75 that had my name on it -- but it was way too early for lunch at 9:15 or so. I made a note to come back here for lunch, because it looked like a cool place to hang out, what with first a Marvin Gaye record playing from a CD player and then Superfly by Curtis Mayfield -- the latter especially an album I've known and loved ever since my older brother bought it when it first came out in 1972. I told Black Beret how great a choice this was, and mentioned how even more than the great Freddie's Dead and the title track, the stirring Little Child Runnin' Wild was the song that made that soundtrack album an absolute masterpiece. Something to that effect. As luck would have it she agreed, and so I thought she might throw it on for me before I had to run and take the test and then I could take that as a sign. That's what music can do for you, get your hopes up. Well, she didn't, and in between her taking care of customers we talked some more about blaxploitation movies before I had to split.

On my way out I heard her tell the other guy behind the counter who was also wearing a black beret that she was working till 1:00 today, so I made a mental note to come back after the test and partake of that Spinach Pie and hold court on a wide range of pop culture arcana. But when we finally finished, it was like 12:30 already, and the weather was just so brutal I decided to head right for the trains. But it's a great destination point for my first bike ride this spring when this crapulous accumulation evaporates under the first rays of the new season.

The test itself took longer than I thought when you include filling out all the paperwork and waiting around for the room to fill up. The exam was more difficult than I expected. You've only got a half-hour for 28 questions, and when the woman giving the test announced 15 minutes to go, I was just filling in the answer for Question 10. So I had to find another gear, and then I had 5 minutes left to answer 5 questions, and so the last 2 answers I was not all comfortable with.

They graded the tests right after we finished, which I was surprised by. I heard the guy tell someone, You got a 97, Call for the Supervisor test. Another guy got a 90, some girl an 80, then he told some poor dude to call for another test, meaning he done failed. I was called last or close to it: You got a 90, Call for the Supervisor test. That shocked me, because I was really unsure on a few early ones, and as I said not at all sure about #27 and #28. But I must have got all the others right, and now at least I'm in the system and I'm waiting for a callback when they give another Supervisors test. That's right, I'm already executive material. We had 'em all the way.

.

Back In Business

WELL, GOOD NEWS and BAD NEWS related to this morning's highly anticipated interview. As befitting a chronic early arriver, I got to the venue a half-hour early at 10:00, and the actual interview lasted 90 minutes. I'll spare you the suspense and give the good first: By the end of the interview I had the position. On the other hand, whereas I knew it was a short-term assignment, it turns out it's a little more short term than I first was led to believe -- your classic bad news for those scoring at home. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely grateful to be back on the good ship Employment, but now instead of what was described by my agency contact as a 6-8-week project, I learned from the guy who hired me that it's 4 weeks at the most and more likely 3. Worse, it's unlikely to turn into a regular or even permanent position, as the entire scope of the job entails editing an annual report for a major public corporation. So the S. S. Full Time ain't boarding passengers any time soon.

Nevertheless, I'm all about the positives. Things could ALWAYS be worse, especially on board this current ship America. I gotta tell you: it was not only the longest interview, but the best interview I've ever had by a magnitude of at least Pi, which we all know is 3.14 give or take a slice. First I met the human resources guy for a second, before he passed me off to the person in charge of the actual thing that I'll be doing. Then we sat in his office and had a wide-ranging, freewheeling conversation that covered the prospective job-to-be, certainly, but not exclusively, not by a long shot. In the hour and a half we spent maybe 20 minutes total on what it is I would be doing -- but that number may be a little high. Instead it was all about books we were reading, how computers have changed publishing since we started in the field about the same time ago in the 1980s, where our families were from in Italy and Greece, respectively, and on and on. I was really on my game today, the very archetype of the Good Listener: not interrupting him as he went on yet remaining visibly interested, all the while just waiting for an opening any opening to hit him with all the A material I've gathered from my years on the circuit. But my point if there is one is not that I have a new best friend here, but the fact that my boss for the next few weeks should be easy to get along with bodes well. As I said, the opposite can always be the case and usually is if my experience is any indication. There's a reason Murphy has that nasty Law named after him.

I've worked some through this agency before, but it was a while ago and sporadic at best: a day here, another there. So now if I absolutely slay this assignment, that puts me in good stead there. And I know at least for me good stead is the absolute best kind of stead. Trust me, I've tried all kinds...

.

After All This Time

LADIES AND GENTS, saints and sinners, freemen and yeomen, Hold on to your respective armrests, because I'm here to report that I have what's known in the employment sector as a real live interview taking place tomorrow. Places and Names shall be withheld for now, of course -- I'm not superstitious, just a little stitious -- but rest assured I do have documentation to back this up and I'm not afraid to use it if I have to.

It is my first such scheduled encounter with a prospective employer in quite some time, and like fellow frustrated out-of-work blogger Nazz Nomad, it hasn't been from lack of applying over lo these many weeks, or months in my case; just a reflection of a very heated competition for what few opportunities present themselves every day. Meaning any relevant job posting on, say, craigslist or mediabistro is immediately inundated with a flood of qualified candidates within literally minutes.

In this instance, a publishing agency I'm registered with emailed it to me. I jumped on it forthwith and followed up with a phone call and another email. It sorta has my name on it, and I'm not quite sure whether this agency or another is sending other proofreaders out to be interviewed for the same job or if it's my chance alone. It does me no good to know either way, does it... I don't really tend to overthink things like that anyway; I save obsessively dwelling for your big metaphysical questions like, If the Shroud of Turin is a genuine 1st century artifact, as I'm beginning to think it is, and not as some nonbelievers among you would have it a Medieval forgery, then do I have to put my shekels where my mouth is and admit I'm starting to feel something stirring the more I read about the early Christians. Ah, you didn't see that one coming, did you. Neither did I, until I found myself literally in tears the other day when reading the stirring conclusion of Thomas Cahill's magnificent Desire of the Everlasting Hills. I won't spoil it for you, except to say it just might be one of the top 2, 3 books of history I've ever read.

Now I'm already well into James Tabor's extremely speculative and conjectural but nevertheless spellbinding The Jesus Dynasty, a work which doggedly depicts the historical Jeez (as his buddies called him), partly by stripping the gospels bare of their theological motivations and partly via recent archaeology, as well as elevates the role of his cuz John D. Baptizer to fellow messiah-ship, among other startling claims, postulations and possibilities. This book literally -- a word I don't take lightly -- couldn't be more fascinating, to me at least, and at the moment that's who we're dealing with here if you hadn't noticed.

Moving off religious history till further notice (and what other kind of notice is there?), I will relate that I'm also scheduled to take the census test Thursday at something called the New York Irish Center located at 10-40 Jackson Avenue, wherever that is. I mean, I know where it is, but to us proud Astorians that's out in the boonies pun intended.

Ironically, or perhaps characteristically, I was at the library printing out my resume and attending to other vital matters Monday when I found out that they were giving the census test upstairs that morning in that very building. But when I asked the census guy today about taking it there, he said tests given at the library fill up fast. So now I have to take a bus ride to Long Island City instead of walking 5 blocks to Ditmars Blvd. That's what I get for procrastinating.

"After all this time
To believe in Jesus
After all those drugs
I thought I was Him
After all my lying
And a-crying
And my suffering
I ain't good enough
I ain't clean enough
To be Him"

The Clash - Sound Of The Sinners

.

Rockabilly Pioneer Dead

ROCK AND ROLL legend Dale Hawkins passed away over the weekend at age 73. He was best known for the raucous 1957 hit Suzy Q -- covered by more famous acts like the Rolling Stones in 1964 on 12 X 5 and later in the decade by Creedence Clearwater Revival, whose own impassioned rendition not only introduced Hawkins to a new generation but also managed to take the song to new heights (and lengths too, stretching it out to almost 9 minutes!), giving it the trademark CCR swamp-blues treatment on their landmark 1968 debut album.

Unfortunately, Youtube is sorely lacking when it comes to tracking down Dale Hawkins archival footage. The above grainy footage of Hawkins is the best the site has to offer. However, there is a cool clip of the very young Stones tearing into it on the American TV show Shindig! with Mick showing off some fine dance moves and Keith shredding lead six-string before the band slows things down with Heart of Stone.



Finally, here's an in-depth obituary from the Shreveport Times for the Louisiana native. According to the article, not only was he one of the few white musicians to record for Chicago's Chess Records back in the '50s -- releasing over 40 tracks for the mostly black blues label -- but Hawkins was the first white performer to play at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater. That's big-time crossover appeal and street cred rolled into one.

Hoops Night Out

IT'S BEEN A FAIRLY GOOD stretch for me lately as far as attending live sporting events. Thanks to generous invites from buddies like Jimi the Greek and Johnny Star, I went to two New York Yankees games at the new Stadium last season, checked out the Mets at their new Citifield in scenic Flushing, and this week caught the Knicks for the first time in a long while at good old Madison Square Garden.

Unfortunately for Knicks fans, of which luckily I'm not a member, the hometown crew managed to fritter away a 15-point 4th quarter lead to the lowly Sacramento Kings -- who, despite some up-and-coming players on the roster, have to be one of the more nondescript franchises in organized sports these days. Here was a 16-34 team riding an 11-game road losing streak into town and the Knicks, now a crappy 19-31 themselves on the year, couldn't seal the deal.

Tuesday happened to be Jewish Heritage Night at the Garden on Tuesday, and it also just happens that Sacramento has the the first and only Israeli player in the NBA on their team. Coincidence? You tell me. Omri Casspi, a 6-foot-9 rookie forward, certainly rewarded all the chants and waving of Israeli flags with a solid 18 points. And as the once-proud Knickerbockers squandered their big lead with their trademark matador defense, I'm sure more than a few fans were heard muttering "Ov vey" as a game seemingly in the bag headed to overtime.

I met John and his two fellow firemen season ticket holders outside the Garden at around 7, then we headed upstairs to the Play by Play bar for a few beers. The tickets actually called for us to sit pretty high up in the rafters, but in time-honored New York tradition we made our way down to four conveniently unoccupied seats in a much lower section, and we stayed there unmolested for the duration of the game -- not quite court side, but close enough to spot any celebs sitting front row. No Spike Lee this night, but there was a Steve Schirripa of Sopranos fame sighting, as well as long-time Hebrew Dustin Hoffman, a Garden regular for years. More importantly, from our improved vantage point we were able to appreciate the finer points and parts of the Knick City Dancers, of booty-shaking dance moves during timeouts fame.

The unquestioned wearer of the goat horns for the hometown squad was Chris Duhon, who shot just 2-10. Duhon is a very average player with a contract that pays him 6 million dollars, which tells you everything you need to know about the dismal state of the NBA. Hardly a fan favorite already, he single-handedly butchered numerous key Knicks possessions, including the end of regulation when he heaved up an exceedingly ugly airball from 3-point range with the shot clock winding down that had lower odds of going in than a random fan coming down from the stands and hitting a half-court bomb. Duhon's heave led to deafening boos from the crowd. Not that the Knicks' lack of execution down the stretch didn't deserve a round or two of harsh booing, but the volume would only grow when, as if coached by no one, the last shot in OT inexplicably went to non-shooter Jared Jeffries of all people, who wildly fired a 3-pointer in desperation with the clock running out. The 6-11 Jeffries makes almost $6.5 million a year and gives the Knicks 5.5 points and 4.4 rebounds a night in return. Nice bang for the buck there, GM Donnie Walsh. The Knicks did get 35 points from Wilson Chandler, but somehow he never saw the ball down the stretch.

The Kings on the other hand are not waiting around for the LeBron James sweepstakes to play itself out over the offseason and instead have assembled some good young talent: 20-year-old Tyreke Evans is a 6-foot-6 point guard with silky smooth moves who finished with 27 points and 10 boards; 6-11 forward Donte Green (21 years old) had 24 points, including the bucket that put his team up 4 in overtime with a minute left; and Jason Thompson, also a second-year 6-11 forward, averages 13 points and 9 rebounds a night and is all of 23. That's how you build a team, rather than a collection of expiring contracts.

Now I'm looking forward to seeing my beloved Philly Sixers at the Garden next month, even if the 76ers are underachieving this season at 20-32 after making the playoffs last year. The game on March 19 may very well be the rapidly fading Allen Iverson's final career appearance at the Garden also, and I bet the place will be packed if New York fans realize that.

Death Comes To Ditmars

NOT THAT ANYONE in the Greater Blogosphere is likely to care or shed a tear, but let it be noted that at 7:30 this very morning a City sanitation worker was struck and killed by a truck just a few short blocks from where I live. When I met my brother at around 8 this morning for coffee at the Bagel Shoppe, he told me that the area around 35th Street and Ditmars Blvd. was blocked off with cop cars. He thought a sanitation truck had hit someone, but later I found out that a 41-year-old garbageman was hit and then pinned between two trucks, and was pronounced D.O.A. at Mt. Sinai, the local hospital, leaving behind as they say a wife and two young kids. Just another death by motor vehicle in a City quite inured to and even tolerant of them.

I always said that if mob hit men were smart (a stretch, granted, but play along), their best bet would be just running over the intended victim. As long as you're not intoxicated, let's face it, no one does hard time in this city for killing a pedestrian or cyclist. In any case, the odds are against it. Last year, according to Streetsblog, "Of the 66 pedestrians, seven cyclists and one wheelchair user known to have died since January, in only 12 cases was the driver reportedly charged for taking a life." Why the hell would you go through the elaborate ritual of stalking a guy and pumping a few bullets into him. And of course if you use an SUV as the "weapon" of choice, the chances of anyone surviving a collision are few and far between. Just get behind the wheel like you usually do, tune everything out, pump up the tunes, crank it up to 70 and BAM! the guy's history. Shoot, you can probably even be texting or sexting or carrying on a cell conversation while you do the deed; most you'll get is a meager fine. The police don't seem to prioritize moving violations for the most part in the City under the all-important guise of keeping the precious traffic rolling along; after all, there'll be plenty of chances to fill the city coffers later when you're caught double-parking.

I have my own rather draconian yet I think fair and indeed necessary solutions when it comes to assholes caught talking on cell phones while driving that involve not only a 90-day suspended license right on the spot but also more far more fitting penance for such selfish behavior -- i.e., violators being forced to pull rickshaws full of obese tourists around the Theater District for a like duration. Because from what I've heard, your conversations suck anyway, so put the damn phone down or pull over and, for chrissakes (as my father used to say), if it's not too much trouble, pay some attention while operating your 2-ton metallic monstrosity. I mean, is it too much for you to live in the moment, to interact with what's in front of you for a change?











Fill 'er up, Draco!
.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

IN A TEXTBOOK CASE of Groundhog Day -- and not the good kind -- we find ourselves in almost the exact same position as when we started this epic blog, as it's almost four years to the day of the first ever Warden's World post, and once again we're out of work, fast running out of unemployment benefits, down-shifting into panic mode. Freelancing itself has totally dried up over the last year, after I had built up a nice stable of clients over a 3-year period, only to see them drop off one by one. That's right, boys and girls, your Uncle Warden needs a job (along with something like 14 million other out-of-work Americans!!), ideally in the field he's put 20+ years in (publishing) -- but at this point how can he possibly get too picky? (Don't answer that, it's a rhetorical question.) But please, no pity parties; we've been there, you've done that. We the people need jobs, as "The System" fails us yet again.

Before the Big Layoff Of '05, I had only been on unemployment one time in my entire existence; now I'm finishing my third such bout in the last 4+ years. One of the only bright spots if you will is all the time it leaves for reading, which in my case is mostly history, although I recently went on a fairly big Shakespeare run to my surprise, finishing the likes of Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, the Henry's (IV, V, VI), which were my favorites, and also a great bio of Willie the Shake called "Will in the World."

Then after watching a PBS special on early Christianity around Christmas, I was really intrigued by the Gnostic movement, the recently discovered Gospel of Judas and other so-called Lost Gospels, as well as choice books of the New Testament, which I had never felt compelled to read before. And who among us without a dental plan can't relate to lines like, "And verily, there shall be great weeping and gnashing of teeth..." Fascinating stuff all around, but the Gnostic use of numerology really had me intrigued -- and when I found out its message of achieving a kind of personal divinity via gnosis, or self-knowledge -- “Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death” (Gospel of Thomas) -- had roots predating Christianity, going back to my ancient Greek homies Socrates and Plato, I was and still am hooked, so to speak.





ONE MORE THING and then we'll let each other go. Just got back from the supermarket, Key Food if you must know and why else would you have read this far, and in the time it took for me to collect my 12 items in a basket, I heard four songs over their in-store system that could have formed the heart of any one of my classic mixtapes. I mean, I walk into the store and David Bowie's Hang on to Yourself is playing! Not nearly loud enough, but it was early in the morning. This is followed by the weakest of the 4 songs, but it's still an AM nugget from my youth that I never mind hearing and usually end up singing all day when I do: Come and Get Your Love, by Redbone. Again, you probably had to be there, both this morning and back in the early '70s when that song was all over the airwaves, but Song 3 was another unexpected gem, one of my absolute favorite Bob Marley songs: Roots, Rock, Reggae with the great shuffling refrain of "Dis-a reggae music" after every line. And last, as I was leaving, another classic: the Kinks' Jukebox Music. When the day starts like that, it's usually a good omen. I'll keep you posted...
.

Jersey Shore cast joins Jay for Jaywalk All-Stars

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

Abusive Kansas Football Coach Resigns
.

Sam, My Man

I WAS WAITING for the Lincoln Center library to open up this morning, a few minutes before 11--trying to fill the hours of yet another unemployed day with some bare modicum of social interaction--when who should I see but Sam Waterston, the excellent actor who plays the District Attorney on one of the 47 or so incarnations of Law & Order, walking right past me. For some odd reason, I found myself saying "Good Show" to the guy as he walked by dressed in a suit and a beige trench coat. He said "Thanks" and as he walked away, I felt the need to throw out another line, asking him if he was the narrator of the latest Ken Burns PBS documentary on America's national parks. I mean, I watched about 3-4 hours of the series, so I already knew he was, but I guess I wanted some verification to that effect, and he admitted that it indeed was him doing the voice-over. I further surprised / embarrassed myself by complimenting him on a job well done. This time there was no "Thanks" in return; old Sam just kept right on walking. And here I thought we were really hitting it off, just two New Yorkers shooting the breeze of a morning. Of course, looking back, can't really blame him: I probably looked like a stalker type in my shades, or just another street crazy or nosy nutjob to the esteemed thespian, whose best movie role was undoubtedly the journalist in The Killing Fields. I too would have walked away from myself had I been in his shoes. Lord knows I've tried, and we all know how painful that can be.

As Sam left the scene, I remembered that there was a terrific bordering on riveting Law & Order episode about three weeks ago dealing with the prosecution of a John Yoo-type scumbag for his depraved legal brief endorsing the use of harsh, okay-as-long-as-it's-not-fatal interrogation techniques by the last administration. Old Sam really made an impassioned stand against the use of torture in that show, and I would have loved to pick his brain on how close his own views were to those of the character he played. Oh well, now I have some material for next time, including some choice personal info I picked up on Wikipedia. Can you say Rupert Pupkin ??!!

.