Handbill Handout

I am sitting in a Hell's Kitchen bar having a few pints with an old friend.  It is a place he has chosen and it is far enough west that we are nowhere near the tourist horde.  I am, as I often do, complaining about my job and the general stupidity of our industry.  Old friend had little patience for this.  "It's not like we work in a coal mine" he says "It's an intellectual coal mine" says I.  "BUT IT ISN'T AN ACTUAL COAL MINE!" He's right, you know.  Besides, what the hell is an intellectual coal mine?

I just saw a very old picture of me. I’m with my brother, and I am maybe seven years old which means he is 23. He is in his full dress Army uniform and I am standing to his right, barely as tall as his armpit and I am wearing a green plaid shirt with a huge 1970’s collar and a denim jacket with a nameplate on it, the same nameplate he is wearing on his full dress uniform. We are standing in front of a brick wall and parts of two windows can be seen, two slivers at the top of the frame. There is a hedge to our right (left in the frame). We are smiling. My arm is wrapped around his waist and the tips of my fingers protrude above his left lower jacket pocket indicating that my brother was a hell of a lot thinner then than either of us are today. My hair is blonder than it is now. It’s all ahead of both of us there, all of the happy days and sad days and the overwhelming grey pile of nothing days that make up the overwhelming majority of life. Days that just lay there like a pile of unf...

There is a particular moment that happens in any long-form celebrity interview that gives me an almost overwhelming urge to throw my shoe through the television. It is an integral part of what Colson Whitehead dubbed the “Bob’s Debut” interview in John Henry Days. “Bob’s Debut” is the first type of article or interview in the cycle of celebrity that introduces the Next Big Bob, usually followed by “Bob Returns” which is the inevitable second novel/record/movie/whatever that comes with some kind of backlash since Bob is now successful (this is especially true in music journalism once someone who was a critical darling hits it big). Then you have “Bob Returns” which is the rehab of Bob’s image after fame has peaked and then fallen due to failed effort/sex scandal/substance abuse/all of the above (Tiger Woods just did his “Bob Returns” interview this week, in fact). There are a couple of other “Bob” interview or article genres but our topic today is “Bob’s Debut” and specifically the o...

For thanks !

I took a quarter out of my pocket and noticed that it was a Kansas quarter. The one with the buffalo on the back. What a wonderful, noble creature of the plains! I imagined the buffalo on my quarter roaming underneath endless Microsoft Word 2007-background-blue skies. Then I imprisoned him in the dark slot of a soda machine in exchange for a Yoo-Hoo. An ice-cold tasty Yoo-Hoo. Mmmmm.

Belief and Technique for Modern Prose by Jack Kerouac ( March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) 1.Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy 2.Submissive to everything, open, listening 3.Try never get drunk outside your own house 4.Be in love with your life 5.Something that you feel will find its own form 6.Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind 7.Blow as deep as you want to blow 8.Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind 9.The unspeakable visions of the individual 10.No time for poetry but exactly what is 11.Visionary tics shivering in the chest 12.In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you 13.Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition 14.Like Proust be an old teahead of time 15.Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog 16.The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye 17.Write in recollection and amazement for yourself 18.Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in languag...

What, you were expecting Carl Palladino?  That guy's nuts!  Go Jimmy !

 Staten Island, New York, September 26, 2010

There is an obscure and seldom-enforced law on the books in New York City concerning the purchase and consumption of meals at fast-food establishments, diners and convenience stores. Even more obscure and lost to the mists of history is the event that forced the City Council’s hand. Not anymore. As part of this website’s redefined identity and commitment to public service, we will be exploring the little-known incidents in local history that shaped the law and culture of our land and continue to affect our daily lives even though we are completely unaware of their existence. Today we will explore the Great Egg Riot of 1896 and the subsequent Ade-Shepherd Act of 1897. Back in the 19th century New York was still a bustling port city. Incidentally, why is it that cities always “bustle”? I mean they surely do not “amble” but they do sometimes “crawl” or even “teem” and yet they are always described as “bustling” unless you’re talking about the people who are then described as “teemi...

Hot day. “Like Vietnam out there” my ex boss used to say and he should know since he served in Vietnam, early on too years before it became fashionable for the white middle class kids to take over dean’s offices and block up traffic and smoke a lot of dope and listen to self-indulgent jam bands in the name of levitating the Pentagon and bringing peace to the world and even more years before many of those white middle class kids became cocaine-addled white collar workers steering the American economy into oblivion while listening to lite-rock radio in their German cars. So it was hot, we have established that fact. I was sitting on the ferry in standard late-week pose: book in one hand, rapidly-warming beer in the other. I felt a touch on my wrist, the gentle touch of someone who knows you or thinks they do. Instantly annoyed but trying to hide it in case the face my eyes are about to meet belongs to someone near and dear, I look up. It isn’t anyone I know. The face is attached t...

Taken before he zapped our camera battery . 

A few more pictures from the music festival I attended two weeks ago today.  First, the view down to the beach from the festival site atop a cliff and yeah, we had to climb a flight of stairs from the beach to get there. Tic Tac was a sponsor, so of course Tic Tac girls were giving out samples.  I still have a few sample-sized packs of Tic Tacs left. The view from the bar area toward the food area and the lighthouse.  The picture doesn't do justice to how beautiful it really was. Jeff Tweedy giant head, Jeff Tweedy, and Jeff Tweedy other giant head (left to right). 

Don't be cheeky to a prankster.  Went to Salvador Dali's house in Figueres today.  Decided to be a wise guy and knock on his tomb to see if anyone knocked back.  Well, right before the room that has the famous ceiling painting of Dali and his wife ascending to heaven our camera battery went dead.  It was fully charged that morning.  Coincidence?