Skip to content

Curbed

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Following up on my pal Denis Munro from the previous post .. he sent a reply once to a letter I mailed him in my early twenties. “Good to see your sardonic wit still intact,” he wrote. “Guard it always.” It was sound advice from an older friend that I perhaps failed to fully appreciate. I showed the letter to another older friend, John C Spears, who read the ‘guard it always‘ bit and added “as you would the Crown Jewels ..” There was something there beyond Spears’s general blowhardiness, but I wondered why a seemingly innate trait would require such delicate attention. In recent years I had occasion to visit a shrink in New York City, which is akin to visiting a tanning salon in Alaska. At our third meeting, in the middle of my reciting what I thought was an honest self-evaluation, he interrupted to observe “Rick, you must be aware that you possess an acerbic sense of humor ..?” I was, but what I didn’t realize was that anything I’d expressed had indicated as much. Apparently Denis and Spears needn’t have worried.

It’s a fine line to walk, this balance between being healthily skeptical and an overt pain in the ass. Lately, I’ve been watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David’s great HBO program. It’s over the top for comedic effect but at its core are some genuinely human observations and assertions. There’s a panel discussion included in the DVD extras and Jeff Garlin, who plays David’s manager on the show, notes that there is a sizable group of people who simply “don’t get it.” This is essential for this form of humor to survive. If everybody got it there would be nothing propelling it forward and it would become, to use a Woody Allen analogy, like a dead shark.

More interesting to me is why Curb works despite David’s character possessing an objectionable, neurotically narcissistic personality. I believe it’s because he has energy, and being at odds with the world around you minus the energy equals an unappealing, depressive mess. Anger fuels this energy. If David’s part is an amplified and exaggerated version of himself, it would appear necessary to sustain this anger even after conquering one’s lofty comedic and monetary ambitions. Naturally, there are pitfalls inherent to subscribing to this confrontational camp. The way I see it, you inevitably fall somewhere on the Larry David – Leo Buscaglia spectrum. Neither is preferable and I’m not sure which better explains the fine line between laughter and tears, but David makes me laugh harder.

Which brings me to the weather we’re having. Outside of a precious few seasonably warm days, the New York spring has merely been a milder extension of winter. I mention this with apprehension, knowing that we’ll now likely jump right in to a pronounced, extended,  and suffocatingly hot and humid summer. Once, while passing through a group congregating in the customer service area of our company and discussing outside temperatures, I pompously proclaimed “weather talk!” It met with mild disdain from most, but got me closer to the new receptionist who found it refreshing. There is no more potent encouragement for one guarding his sardonic wit. And besides, I kind of like the rain.

Filed in Posting | | Comments (0)

A Plain-Living Scotsman In America

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

photo (33)My long-standing Scottish friend Denis Munro was in town last week completing the final leg of an Atlantic cruise with a short stint in Manhattan. Denis isn’t what you’d call a “man of excess.” His rule of thumb for both food and language is the same: keep it simple. ‘Exotic cuisine’ includes anything with salt or more than two colors. He rejects any added dressing or condiment as suspicious. Trying to put it democratically he explained “to me sauces are like children; I quite understand that other people want them but I don’t see the point.” Some might expect such dietary restrictions to hamper one’s enjoyment of life but Denis proves otherwise. Once he determined that ‘oatmeal’ was the same thing as ‘porridge’ it was smooth sailing to New York.  He met a gaggle of Mexican chiquitas on the ship and quickly charmed them with his Sean Connery accent, stumbling only slightly when they suggested dinner at an on-board sushi restaurant called Raw Food.

Luckily, Denis fits my description of an ideal visitor. I have neither time nor taste for most ‘must-see’ restaurants in New York or anywhere else. I love to eat but would just as soon do so amid a pack of well-behaved schmucks instead of rubbing elbows with Beyoncé or Bruce Willis. I think it’s largely a female-propagated phenomenon, this idea of favoring exclusive eateries with long waiting lists and celebrity clientele. I don’t get eating somewhere to be seen. If I’m at a Lakers game and Jack Nicholson is sitting three rows in front of me, that’s something. But paying a premium to see him fork his vegetables at a nearby table doesn’t make my food taste any better. Most women leave half their meal on the plate at these restaurants anyway. But I’ve gotten off-topic .. back to Denis. We did end up at one exotic bistro, at least by his definition: Katz’s Delicatessen. It was by his request though; he wanted to see the place where ‘Meg Ryan faked it with Billy Crystal’ in the movie. This was probably my fifth time in the famed Lower East Side establishment, enough to know the routine of securing a ticket at the entrance and having it marked off as you order. We kept it simple, splitting a corned beef sandwich on rye. Our carver asked how I wanted it and I requested mostly lean. There was a perceptibly relieved expression on Denis’s face when he tasted the sample and found it suitably palatable. It was a proud moment upon completing his unadorned, half-sandwich and he emailed a before-meal photo of the plate to all his friends.

Denis doesn’t drink either yet was perfectly comfortable sipping a sparkling water as I tipped a pint of Stella in various local bars. We even ate a meal one night, Denis a salad and I spring rolls, in a typical Irish tavern south of 14th Street.  We sat on a couch directly under a huge TV projecting the Rangers playoff hockey game and he explained how his ‘Aunty High Street’ back in Perth would take him to the hockey matches and poke the referees with her hat pin if displeased with the officiating. The noise level in the bar increased as the game wore on but when I asked Denis if he wanted to leave he requested staying until the end to see who won. The evening ended well with a Rangers victory followed by a young dude from the bar chasing after us on the street to return Denis’s hotel umbrella, thus saving him a $75 charge.

We covered the city and Brooklyn on foot most of the time he was here. I’m a firm believer that, if you’re able, this is the only way to see New York. It comes at you by the minute in faces, body types, and conversational snippets. I was more attuned to this when I first arrived but these days it takes a visitor to bring it back to the forefront. We walked the High Line on his last full day in the city, an elevated west side railway line turned in to a lush, linear park. My feet were sore from the miles we’d covered but Denis didn’t complain. The sun was setting on the Hudson River and he got some good photo shots with his trusty, treasured iPad. It was a brief visit and we didn’t fit in everything I’d planned but in the end its success could be marked by the soles of our shoes. Denis seemed satisfied with his stay and particularly a follow-up email that he received from one of cruise line señoritas urging that he keep in touch. I’m with her: garlic phobia not withstanding, he’s welcome back any time.

Filed in Posting | | Comments (1)

Boston Strong

Monday, April 22, 2013

Quite the one-week news cycle. From my somewhat skewed perspective, there are two distinct sides to the recent occurrences in Boston. There are the facts, which in this case are blatantly disturbing: innocent people losing their lives and limbs for no defensible reason. Long after all of this has receded from the general public’s frontal lobe, others will be absent legs and family members. Their reminders will be permanent and require no ‘Breaking News’ updates flashing across the bottom of the TV screen. And then there’s the spin. At every turn last week we were being told how to feel – more safe, less safe, contemplative, outraged, angry, sad, confused. Opposing political news outlets reminded us that there was no room for partisanship and that “at times like this we are all Americans.” Then they spun it anyway.

Despite the appalling human tragedy this stuff is tailor-made for the modern news and information era. The combined elements of this story created an unusually suitable mix for instantly disseminated images and information. General precepts of terrorism – fostering unease by creating a vague and undefinable enemy – are perfectly suited to 24 hour news updates and every citizen being dubbed a reporter by virtue of owning a camera phone. As the concluding chapter unfolded very early Friday morning I was way ahead of any news station. There were reports of a shooting at MIT and a car chase leading out of Boston proper in to Watertown. I typed “Watertown” in to Google and was instantly connected to people posting live tweets and Google+ status updates about federal vehicles and explosions filling the streets outside their homes. The days of Walter Cronkite breaking the news about JFK are in the pterodactyl pile.

And yet with all of this newly-infused technology, the human response still seemed curiously predated and predictable. I should be careful where I tread here, lest I be misunderstood. I’m an abnormally patriotic sort in my own right, prone to displaying large reserves of civic and national pride. But something about the “USA!” chants, “Boston Strong” logos, and fervent crowd-singing of the national anthem at a hockey game puzzled me. Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz whipped the crowd at Fenway in to a frenzy by proclaiming “thees ees our fuckin’ city” in his Dominican accent. His language was endorsed by none other than FCC chairman Julius Genachowski who said that Ortiz ‘spoke from the heart’ and asserted “I stand with Big Papi and the people of Boston.” Yeah .. way to not play it safe, Julius. Janet Jackson flashes a little titty at the Super Bowl and is banned for life, but thousands of kids watching a Red Sox game should be fuckin’ on board with this one.

Getting to the “don’t get me wrong part” part .. I understand that it’s important and even healthy to have a sense of who we are as a people. And I react even less favorably to this “national shame” shit when promoted for the purpose of political posturing from either side. I’m just not sure who we’re yelling “USA!” at on this one. A twelve-man sleeper cell spread out in various low-rent digs across the country? A terribly misguided 19 year-old from Chechnya who wears a backwards ball-cap and bears striking resemblance to Tom Petty’s ex bass player? It all feels a bit hollow in light of this rather random, senseless and terribly damaging act. I don’t need a common enemy to feel good about America or cities like New York, Boston, and San Francisco .. and even if I did it wouldn’t make me feel any better about what happened to those people on Boylston Street.

Filed in Posting | | Comments (0)

The Ebert List

Friday, April 5, 2013

R.I.P. Roger Ebert. I’m not a big fan of list-writing but in this case it seems appropriate. Ebert will be missed for the following five reasons, and more.

1) He was an excellent and prolific writer who never over-wrote. Ebert’s ideas and interest in his subjects were paramount but his prose was accessible. If you could read and think, you could gain from whatever he had to say. Even if you disagreed with him you had to admire how he put it.

2) He had passion. I’ve been going to the movies since I was six years old but long ago developed a sense of cynicism for the experience. I can recall seeing The Poseidon Adventure and Dog Day Afternoon as a kid (despite being too young for the latter) and feeling transformed, like I’d been taken to another place. Ebert watched five hundred movies a year, many of them crap, yet never lost touch with this magic potential. His passion wasn’t limited in scope; he wrote with equal enthusiasm about everything ranging from life and death to Steak N Shake burgers. Which leads me to #3:

3) He was a good fat guy. Ebert had the kind of self-confidence that transcended physical appearance and actually allowed him to make his weight work for him – no small feat considering modern society’s contempt for the corpulent. He had that rare combination of humor and practicality when it came to his size, allowing himself to be weighed on The Howard Stern radio show yet never being overly-compliant about it. He was unapologetic about his physicality and owned it. When he became thin in later years due to a cruelly ironic condition preventing him from eating solid food, he still retained his life-long fat guy sensibility. His memoir is filled with countless references to the meals he’d eaten in his lifetime.

4) He adapted and excelled with the times. Ebert began his career in the print industry applying inked words to pulp with a manual typewriter about movies that originated on celluloid. As those mediums evolved he wrote intelligently about what was being lost at the same time as he embraced change. He knew instinctively that content trumps all and that his own skill – an ability with words – never grows old. A good movie transcends both film and digital and good writing presents on both page and screen. His most prolific output came later via blog posts and tweets and the quality never suffered.

5) He faced age, illness and death bravely. This was a man of substantial ego, and yet when it came to the subject of the cessation of Self he never flinched. His writing about death has a matter of fact eloquence to it and stresses his enjoyment of being present and gifted with the ability to communicate. He could neither eat nor speak yet maintained not only the will to live but a genuine excitement for the world around him. He was an enthusiastic intellectual, which is a rare and potent combination.

Filed in Posting | | Comments (2)

Eat-In Kitchens

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

lib“Of course the coffee’s HOT! So don’t be stupid!” Mazzola bakery, down the street on Union, includes this admonishment on their coffee cups. It’s the little shit that I appreciate about New York, still found in select corners and available to anyone willing to pay attention. I was giving a young visitor a tour of Manhattan last year when she stopped in the middle of a typically crowded street, looking upward. As the oblivious masses passed on either side of us she pointed to ornamentation on the buildings – cornices adorned with eagles and gremlins, faces of all description – just above our field of sight. It was a temporary revelation. I knew subconsciously that they were there, these small details, on many structures beyond the Chrysler and Empire State buildings. But how often did I really see them?

It passes you quickly, life and this city, and is impossible to take in minute to minute whether you have all the time in the world or none at all. It comes in moments, watching your kid kick a ball for the first time or walking with your father in to a newly constructed ballpark. The realization is overwhelming; these instances are finite yet surround us daily. My early experiences in New York are still fresh in my head. A lot of the in-between has faded yet I can see that first drive in from JFK on the BQE with my friend Sara, so thankful that there was someone here to greet me yet struck by how ordinary and ugly the roadway was. The next morning, up after a sleepless first night in an unfamiliar sublet, I walked around Brooklyn brick and brownstone sipping coffee while my brain began the weeks-long process of settling. A few hours later, disembarking the F for the first time at 42nd .. “holy shit” .. about summing up where my head would be in the coming months. “Real-time appreciation” as I put it in what I was writing back then. This seemed about as good a description as any.

We’re always running or hiding somewhere, doing something to get us out of that real-time. I realize this is no novel concept and entire wings of bookstores are dedicated to living in the present, be it via yoga and meditation or scaling mountains and jumping out of airplanes. I recall being in the kitchen, late night, at a party on the Upper East Side about a year after I moved here, practicing signatures on a small black chalkboard with a woman who told me she got the feeling that I was running away from something. It was no Svengali Moment, but as I considered the plethora of life points from which one might run, I kept coming back to death. Running from or toward it are equally pointless but attempting to ignore it is futile as well. Perhaps running (walking, sitting) with it is the trick .. but I’ve indulged the point enough.

I’ve been looking at real estate lately. Just the term “real estate” is a bit ridiculous for what qualifies in this city. Living spaces that would be considered constricted corners in many parts of the globe are referred to as ‘spectacular’ and ‘unique’ without a hint of irony. Brokers urge buyers to act quickly and bid high, mostly with good reason. As I squeeze in to these tight spaces with the affluent minions, sweating as is my way and trying to size up who these folks – most younger than I and in some cases just out of college and with their parents – are, I can feel the last vestiges of my real-time appreciation slipping away. It isn’t that the pursuit is pointless. Buying houses and nicer cars and having kids and friends and parties and careers .. I mean hell, I’m OK with it. You can’t sit on a Tibetan cliff every day of your life giving careful consideration to a branch. But something in me, even at this late stage and perhaps as result of misguided privilege, wants to reject .. well, giving it so much thought. And waiting out on a point in the harbor on any given night is that statue, stone-faced despite copper exterior, delivering what I imagine to be the greatest straight-line in the history of urban comedy.

Filed in Posting | | Comments (0)

In Like A Lion

Sunday, March 24, 2013

IMG_7433-001It snowed Monday night following St Patrick’s Day, beginning in the afternoon as a fine, gritty sleet peppering my face as I tried to run. By evening it transformed in to large, fluffy flakes that stuck together and accumulated on the street a few inches thick.  I decided to find a bar, an infrequent instinct for me these days limited to nights like this. All the elements – Monday, snow, day after an amateur drinker’s holiday – were in place. Nobody in their right mind would be out on a night like this, and they weren’t. Mine were the only tracks on the dimly-lit white sidewalk as I crossed the BQE overpass and joined one other patron in the tavern. It’s more curiosity than business, this small  joint four blocks from my house, and has topped out with maybe eight customers on the handful of random weeknights I’ve been inside. The owners are a female couple who hire only women bartenders .. not the typical midtown, twenty-something shot-girl types pushing rounds by virtue of their cleavage, but more mature and substantial tap handlers. Both bartender and lone drinker announced their ages within five minutes of my occupying a stool – she’s 53 and he turns 60 this weekend.

“Id never guess you were sixty,” she tells him because she’s supposed to. I don’t suppose he looks it either but withhold this opinion because I don’t want to encourage him. I’m struck by how hammered he is at eight-thirty on a Monday night, pounding his legs furiously with the music and making a point to note in between songs that he’s a drummer. It’s not an occupation suited for a sixty year-old unless it’s Max Roach in his prime, sitting behind the kit. He mentions it again discussing roommate issues. ‘It’s MY name on the lease so I put my fuckin’ foot down,” he slurs. “I’m a drummer. I take enough shit from people already ..” He’s pleased with this and gives an awkward laugh – “huh-huh, huh-huh.” She’s professionally polite, wanting neither to discourage a rare weeknight regular nor give him too much of an opening. She mentions her own roommate and I reflect on being the only one there having the run of my own place when I get home. The music stops and she returns to the jukebox to play something else. “Roxy Music – fuck YEAH!” he exclaims and then launches in to an awkward knee-slapping intro to “Avalon.”

I talk with her a while about London, the tube, Bryan Ferry, New York, Brooklyn, and apartments. She tops my shot and goes outside to shovel the entrance. He’s working on a burger from the joint next door. I get ready to leave. “Enjoy your birthday” I tell him. “You play football?” he asks. Not on a night like this I say. “I was a backup in high school,” he tells me. “Got to play one game when the starter was out. The guy who was covering me kept kicking me in the balls every chance he got. I finally took a wild swing and popped him on the chin under his helmet. Knocked him out.” He segues seamlessly in to the fact his old man thought he was gay. “That changed when I got my girlfriend pregnant .. huh-huh, huh-huh.” I put a generous tip on the bar, give him a grin and head for the door. Outside she’s shoveled most of the snow from in front. She asks if I’m leaving already and I say that I am before heading back to my warm, empty apartment.

Filed in Posting | | Comments (0)

Privateering

Friday, March 15, 2013

I’ve been listening to Mark Knopfler’s ‘Privateering‘ of late. It was released six months ago but I wouldn’t have tripped on it had I not seen him in November when he opened for Dylan in Brooklyn.  A friend bought the double CD for me after we attended the show and made fun of the ‘Knopfler Knuts’ sitting in front of us – a quartet of 30ish chubby dudes and nerdy girls going crazy for their hero on the stage below. This is often how I come across worthwhile stuff, by first mocking those more perceptive than I enjoying it. I’ve always liked his guitar playing though I was never a huge Dire Straits fan. I did like the quieter stuff like ‘(walking in the) Wild West End’ and the ‘Notting Hillbillies’ album he put out a long while back.

Giving a closer listen to Privateering I concluded he’s more than a decent lyricist. It also occurred to me that giving anything a ‘closer listen’ these days involves quite a complex process. The entire album has to be good enough that I’m not inclined to switch over to another disc or shut it off mid-listen. Knopfler has been influenced by JJ Cale’s guitar playing. More is less and simple note shifts and finger-picking within the same minor chord pull the listener unconsciously in. The same holds true for his singing and lyrics – they play almost in the background the first ten times through. I often mis-hear some of the songs I end up liking most. In the title track I was sure I heard him sing:  “The people on your man o’ war are treated worse than scum / I’m no fuckin’ captain though by god I’ve sailed with some.” Except it’s ‘flogging‘ captain which works equally well. These are small details but they add up to some illusive whole for me. There’s also a cool song about New York and the Statue of Liberty – Radio City Serenade – that begins with the line “you got to have no credit cards to know how good it feels.” It reminded me of Neil Young’s ‘Thrasher‘ where he sings “burned my credit card for fuel.” I give it three of four stars and a rare ‘check it out’ rating . At the very least you can keep it on in the background without strong objection. 

Filed in Posting | | Comments (3)

Noodle Town Close

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

I get off the train at East Broadway and cut past Seward Park on to Canal, through Chinatown and toward the restaurant. It’s cold in New York, maybe twenty-five degrees, and I haven’t been in the city for months. By ‘the city‘ I mean Manhattan. That’s what they call it here as simple distinction from the other boroughs, the same designation reserved by some San Franciscans for their city but without the pretentious need for capitalization. That always bothered me about San Francisco, the unnecessarily sanctimonious attitude taken by some toward what is already a great town. Just let it stand on its own .. no need to capitalize or bristle when someone says ‘Frisco. She’s a big girl and has been through worse. Earthquakes, for one. But I complain too much.

I’m headed for The Great NY Noodle Town, a Chinese joint for those unable to read between the lines, first introduced to me by Sean O’Toole in 2001. Sean’s a career chef whose résumé spans continents and five-star establishments. He’s worked in Vegas, Paris and New York but only after crashing at my San Francisco apartment way back when and getting his start in the kitchen at the Ritz-Carlton. It’s the kind of career ambition that eludes me but that’s a story for another time. Suffice to say I was there, remember it, and tend to remember most things better than others. So there’s that too. On that particular night I was with my girlfriend, a vegetarian but never one to fuss excessively about food. Sean ordered up about ten dishes, roast pork, vegetables, noodles, etc. It was all simple and fresh and the three of us sat in the crowded, noisy, exceptionally unpretentious surroundings and enjoyed a great meal. He’d been introduced to the place by the head chef from where he worked on the Upper East Side. It was a few months after 9-11 and we weren’t far from a large, cordoned-off area of downtown littered with concrete ruins. Something about the city felt real and immediate to me. It still feels that way and although the sense itself is ephemeral and unsustainable, I believe that when you give up chasing it you die.

Noodle Town is closed on this cold February night more than eleven years later. I notice the pulled-down metal doors and sign in both English and hanzi from across the street while standing near the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge. “Close For Chinese New Year Party To-Night,” it says, upon further inspection. I do some quick translating, surmising that they aren’t in fact suggesting that the restaurant is conveniently located nearby for all my Chinese New Year needs. It’s spelled this way, ‘close‘, on signs posted on several other restaurants in the area, emphasizing the first rule of China: power in numbers. Those same numbers allow for another joint – Big Wong King – to be open just a few blocks away on Mott. It’s OK but certainly no Noodle Town despite over five hundred Yelp reviews by what I’m guessing are largely young, white girls who have never met Sean O’Toole.

I look for a bar after but meet my match in the cold and retreat to a warm cab. The city seems simple on this winter night; uncrowded by New York standards and low-key functional. A guy huddles in his overcoat, walking briskly and eating an ice cream despite the weather. Two twenty-something girls in the cab next to me burn with elusive Monday night enthusiasm. On the other side of the Manhattan Bridge my apartment awaits, a fortunately warm if impermanent destination.

Filed in Posting | | Comments (0)

The Secret Life of Gomer Pyle

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

‘Gomer Pyle’ Star Marries Male Partner. I caught this Internet headline at 3 a.m. this morning in my typically sleepless state. 82 year-old Jim Nabors decides to ‘officially’ come out of the closet and tie the knot with his partner of almost four Hawaiian decades. To steal a line from Dennis Miller in reference to similar revelations from i-less center square and Ted Knight co-star Jm J Bullock: “Consider those tea leaves read, Jimbo.”

The blurb did lead me to a good and overwhelmingly appropriate Pyle episode on YouTube: The Secret Life of Gomer Pyle. Our favorite Marine finds himself on a break from rug-hooking classes one Sunday down by the Santa Monica pier and runs in to two unscrupulous photographers who dupe him in to posing for shots that they later insert bikini clad babes in to for a girly magazine.”Sunday Is Fun-Day” is the the article, and who should be perusing said periodical the very next weekend (the publishing industry had a faster turnaround time back then) than Pyle’s tightly-wound drillmaster, Sgt Carter. “Look at this guy,” he remarks enviously to the innocuous Corporal Boyle, “..and a Marine, too. Some guys get all the luck.” And then .. wait for it .. “Heyyyyy…. WAIT A MINUTE …”

The episode got me considering a lot of things, including whether Vince Sutton, who portrayed Sgt Carter and died of a sudden heart attack at fifty, was a Lee Strasberg graduate. That brand of elevated blood pressure is difficult to pull from thin air. Also relevant was the simple fact that they don’t make them like this anymore. While one could argue that we’re living in the golden age of episodic television, you can’t find the 2013 equivalent of “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” All of which leads me to something I’ve been wanting to get off my chest for some time but, due to lack of blogging and general expressive apathy, have not: What’s up with the popularity of this “Homeland” show? A recent grievance with the reprehensible Time Warner Cable led to my receiving six free months of Showtime and I figured “at least I can watch that Mandy Patinkin series that Obama digs.” And … What a colossal piece of shit.

I don’t know what’s so discouraging, the overwhelming popularity of this program (although, as spoofed in a recent SNL skit, it is largely among white people – our President not withstanding) or that several ‘insiders’ have proclaimed it the most accurate portrayal yet of inner-CIA workings. This certainly won’t relieve my habit of late-night waking. Apparently the agency assigned to protecting this country from foreign threat is lined with ginger-haired, bawling chicks who are in insult to bi-polar disorder and get re-hired at the drop of a hat after weekly incidents of compromising national security. The show flat-out sucks.

Though it may seem counter-intuitive to some I’m certain that the cultural drain circles have become faster and smaller in the decades since Gomer Pyle aired on CBS in 1964. And while there’s some consolation in a long-closeted television actor being able to marry in the twilight of his years, it’s really just a token of progressiveness in what is the final drain approach. Or maybe that Homeland show just got under my skin ..

Filed in Posting | | Comments (0)

Best of World View

Monday, January 21, 2013

I’m expressing with my full capabilities
And now I’m living in correctional facilities – Dr Dre /NWA “Express Yourself”

Been a while since I’ve written anything. I was in California for a long stay necessitated by a family situation .. but this probably overloaded the thought process as opposed to leaving no time to riff. I’m sure I’ll have something to add in the near future, but meanwhile here’s something from five and half years back that I probably liked a lot more than anybody else did, poorly-written or not:

Riff-Raff

Bon is gone but Brooklyn rocks on

A long time ago a girl I liked at work had a denim jacket with a “Riff Raff” button pinned to it. At first I thought it reference to the AC-DC tune, and then I figured it a character from Rocky Horror Picture Show, but I believe it was actually from a Ken Loach film about a recently-released Glaswegian prisoner. On this I could be wrong too .. it’s been known to happen. The phrase “riff-raff” comes from the medieval French “rifle et rafle” which referred to the plundering of dead bodies on the battlefield and the carrying off of the booty. By about 1470 the English term referenced citizens of the “common order” and several decades after this it came to mean the dregs of society. Riff-Raff was also the name of several bands, a magazine, and a character in the animated TV show “Underdog.” The first part of the word, “riff” means a short melodic phrase or chord progression. I think this was part of the gist of the AC-DC tune as Angus Young has always been the undisputed King of the Guitar Riff.

A tornado touched down in Brooklyn the other night, which I find infinitely more fascinating than a tree growing here. It occurred in the middle of a torrential downpour that hit the borough with violent force. I did the only logical thing and made my way to the roof, seeking out the highest point on a water tower ladder to see what was going on. Upon informing my brother of this move, he suggested I might want to do some “reading up on Ben Franklin.” Though such research has potentially life-saving ramifications, it would also cut in to my understanding of things like the definition of riff-raff. And whether you venture to the roof or not, sometimes you can’t help being at the center of the storm. (8/10/07)

Filed in Posting | | Comments (0)