Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Making Carl Bernstein chuckle
Morning Mickey,
So the editors were just simpletons enjoying a romp with the powerful. Hmm. Yes, there must have been a time when it was a simple matter of a business luncheon or a coveted invitation in order to grease the wheels. Today it’s much more insidious, I’m sure.
Today in history sez:
in 1620 the Mayflower set sail from Englandin 1920 thirty people were killed in a terrorist bombing on Wall street
in 1942 US bombers destroyed the Japanes base in the Aleutian islands.
and on a nicer note,
in 1925 both B.B. King and Charlie Byrd were born.
Posted by Amelopsis on from Canada 09/16 at 07:56 AMmy story is I went up to France to pick grapes after phone conversations with a friend up there telling me Come on up, lots of work, nice place to stay. Got off the train with Joe, a writer from Chicago and Stefan, an opera singer from Berlin whom we met that day, met Nico and walked five miles in the middle of the night to a park full of abandoned houses, the house he was staying in had a few years worth of food containers and beercans strewn about the place, a sicklylooking dog sitting eerily on a mattress in one corner. We started to bed down but heard these huge rats honking around the place so left to sleep outside - this was Joe´s idea, personally I don´t give a shit, I can share with rats, specially considering I belong to the dirtiest species on the planet. We sat and talked and played guitar for hours on a beach with a lighthouse sweeping by now and then, it was magical. Sleeping in a field that night was so cold I got cramps from balling up so tight.
We called over to Nico to find him on the top floor of the abandoned house. There was no staircase left, you had to grip the metal hooks out of the wall that used to hold the bannister and slot your feet into the holes where the steps used to be and sort of crab-climb your way up. I didn´t feel like climbing so talked to Nico with just his head visible floating back and forth in front of me, he was so relaxed as to be impossibly vague as to where he was finding work, it kindof reminded me of Apocalypse Now when the guy travels for the entire movie to find Marlon Brando mumbling in the shadows.
Turned out we were too late for many of the vineyards, they organise their folk beginning of August or before, through in Rioja they don´t start till October. Joe went home, things a bit chaotic for him, though he did enjoy himself. The next few days we spent wandering about eating nice cheese we bought and blackberries, figs and grapes we found. There wasn´t much work done, unless sleeping in grapefields and looting grapes for breakfast counts. It was strange to find trees with figs still on them in southern France, usually folk there are formidable huntergatherers, I guess living in a place with three supermarchés would wither off those reflexes. Wrote on song on the ukelele, a little Frenchsounding melody with a weird barlength which we recorded with Stefan doing harmonies on the 4track I brought with me. After all this the idea of physical work wasn´t too appealing so we decided just to hang around and play some of the cafés. The people in the town were incredibly sweetnatured save for a bunch of northern French tourists who kicked us out of their chalet at 7a.m. because our girlfriends wouldn´t #### them.Posted by owen on from barcelona 09/16 at 09:56 AMHello Expendables. The rain has passed and NYC is mighty sunny today.
Owen, you have the line of the day thus far: I can share with rats, specially considering I belong to the dirtiest species on the planet.
Captcha sez: next (as in “who’s...?)
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/16 at 11:40 AMJust checking back in after enjoying some much-needed sun. I see traffic continues to increase but, again, comments are few and far between. RMJ? RT? Chris? DW? Helga? Hawk? Fiona? Keir? CatLady? Youngfox? Calling all Expendables…
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/16 at 04:53 PMQuiet day today, huh?
We just got back from a show by Matmos and Zeena Parkins, one of the best concerts we’ve been to in a long time. The event was poorly advertised and kind of expensive (we had free tickets because I curated a fringe part of the festival it was attached to) so not enough people there at all. That didn’t stop this dynamic duo of severely white people from dancing in front of us through the whole evening. The guy, in shorts and a long sleeve shirt, essentially did this weird Elvis maneuver, not lifting his toes off the ground but just his heels and swinging his knees, all the while holding his hands behind his back like a kid in school shyly reciting a poem. The gal, who seemed to be the kind of person who would describe herself as a ‘gal’ rather than a woman, was all 1980’s and half his size, dancing like she was possessed by the entire cast and crew of The Breakfast Club. Tight white shirt, a white skirt, fishnet stockings and eyeglasses. They provided many laughs, and for a moment I was thinking about how blissfully ignorant they were of the fact that they were embarassing themselves. But then, the music was fantastic, and pulsing and mostly very much danceable, but hardly anyone besides these two were moving. Being there in every sense shouldn’t be embarrassing. You go into a club or a bar or whatever in real places where people are still human and not afraid of their emotions and capable of dancing without the promise of a fast and filthy #### later on (I have for example what I’ve seen in Poland and Turkey on my mind) and people just dance dance dance to whatever is playing, through whatever sound system. Then there are places, Holland among them, where there is a better [read: more rigid] sense of social order and dancing is never always acceptable. Dunno if that makes sense but that’s my story and I’m sticking by it.
Posted by Keir on from The Hague (Jackowski election hdqts) 09/16 at 07:33 PMThere isn’t a story that doesn’t become interesting once it mentions fishnet stockings. Thanks, Keir.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/16 at 07:38 PMOn the morning of 9/11/2001, I had just arrived home from work. It was a strange time anyway for me, as I was in the process of getting divorced from my first wife, and still living in the Uptown condo we had bought together. Anyway, what was unfolding that morning didn’t shock me so much as sadden me (I knew, even before the towers collapsed, that a lot of firefighters were rushing up to their doom. But for a day and a time zone, could have been me). The pathetic corporate news coverage that was unfolding was pissing me off to boot, so I thought it best to do what I usually did in the morning, which was go to the gym. One more good excuse to get out of the house, I guess.
As I left the gym at about 12:30 pm, I made my usual shopping stop at the Jewel Food Store next door to the World Gym on Montrose and Sheridan. The Chicken Little fever that swept the nation that day was in full effect in Chicago by mid-morning, so that people were already being informally evacuated from their downtown office buildings (especially the gov’t workers). Some of them were in Jewel buying groceries, which meant that the store-- usually rather devoid of customers at this time-- was busier than the staff could readily keep up with. This, in turn, led to longer waits in the checkout line.
Of course, the events of the morning had most people in a psychic tailspin. However, there were some for whom the daily social rigors of living in the freshly (at the time) gentrifying Uptown neighborhood would not relax, not even for the horrifying specter of the collapsing Twin Towers. Just ahead of me in line was a middle-aged black woman who, like me, had barely an armful of items to purchase. There was a middle-aged white woman ahead of her who had only slightly more to buy than us, but who had used a shopping cart nonetheless. (Now I must interject for two reasons: one, to let you know there’s a reason I’m giving you the skin color of the players involved; and two, to provide you with a brief lesson in Chicago grocery shopping etiquette: when you bring a shopping cart into the checkout line, it is generally, if not officially, considered your responsibility to push the cart out of the checkout lane at least as far as it will not be an obstruction to other shoppers.) As the white woman was handed her groceries by the bagger, she turned toward the exit. Her shopping cart, however, was still in the lane, right where it had been when she’d emptied it onto the belt. The black woman, sparing no volume (captcha_word!), said “Miss, you left your cart.” Now, I believe even the residents of Graceland Cemetary heard the annoyed black woman’s not-so-gentle reminder, but the white woman strutted out the door as though she hadn’t. The seething black woman dropped her items on the belt in front of the cashier, and moved to push the cart out of the lane herself. The gracious, smiling young bagger moved in to take the cart out of the way, leaving the fuming black woman to vent verbally: “That’s why they bombing us, because you people always want to have your way.”
Seeing that she and I were the only African-Americans in sight at the time, I was torn. Part of me thought, that is a highly inappropriate thing to say right now, while another part was thinking, crudely put, sister, but I feel ya. I was raised to stop and think carefully before acting or speaking, though, so I held my tongue. Now that I think of it, my only outward reaction-- as the black woman took her groceries and muttered her way out of the store-- might have been a Nimoy-style raised eyebrow.
Posted by Church Secretary on from Chicago, Illinois 09/16 at 10:06 PMThanks for the story, CS...and extra points for using the captcha word.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/17 at 06:10 AMHere’s a late entry from a friend named Dave:
Scene: Summer, 2006. A class discussion bulletin board at a top-rated masters degree program in the midwest. The topic: “Is reading good for you? Is it better for people to read something, anything, than nothing?”
Someone posts a news item about Lt. Ehren Watada, whose turning point in his service career was reading evidence that the reasons for the invasion of Iraq were complete fabrications, leading to his “refusal to deploy” (and subsequent court-martial, now in progress). The reply is made “Lt. Watada’s
initiative is commendable, but how do we get the rest of the military to read as he does?” A third party, with 26 years of military service in tow, posts “We do teach everyone to read, starting with their enlistment contract.”This story is 100% true, and coming soon to your neighborhood.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/18 at 04:47 AMIt’s never too late to add a story…
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/18 at 04:50 AM
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