Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Saturday, October 22, 2005
NYPD Blues
love stories like this.
like a million other schools, people in my school would set the fire alarm off to get out of lessons - nothing new there i know but a girl i used to go out with told me that in her school they would phone in a bomb threat. altho the staff knew it was rubbish they had to at least be seen to take it seriously. this meant they had to evacuate the school and walk everyone 15 minutes distance up the road. by the time all that was done they had missed an hour which was obviously the plan.
if you did that now they would hunt you down and lock you up under terrorism laws
bizarrely enough my captcha for this was ‘fear’
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/22 at 10:30 AMSame here, Michael. Fake bomb threats worked if you spaced them out a bit...and there was little fear of being sent to Gitmo. Reminds me of a poem I wrote a while back:
fire drills
nuns can be sadistic
the fire drills at st. patrick’s grammar school
seemed timed for nastiest weather
or during standardized tests
worst was gym class in the winter
lined up outside the building shivering
in t-shirts and shorts
passers-by gawking at our pale skin
covered in goose bumps
nuns draped head to toe in black…
warmwe had a genuine bomb scare once
no one knew the difference until much laternuns can be secretive too
Captcha: covered (what’s going on here?)
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/22 at 10:41 AMpart of our gym curriculum was ‘cross country’ but school budgets were low so this consisted of going a 2 miles or so around the residential area and then twice round the park. the teachers would drive round the route checking everyone was ok.
some of us used to take the bus.
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/22 at 10:48 AMLast May my friend Fergal (from a couple of counties over in Ireland but I met him here) and I thought we could firm up some associationlines, help people think vampires when they see banks by stencilling pictures of them on their walls so I sketched out the most stylised one I could and we set out that evening. Spain has more banks than any country I´ve ever been to, a feature of the new uh democracies. We painted about eighteen or twenty in my neighbourhood then crossed over toward the gothic one, stopping in a winding alley to put some selfportraits down. Our lookout went home. We stepped out onto a street leading off Plaza Del Jackboot, the square with all the governmental buildings. We were in the middle of painting one when I felt this presence behind me, I looked underarm and saw an enormous boot on the pavement. Might have been the end of it but I had no ID on me which I refuse to carry anyway so they took us to a station on the Ramblas and made us sit there while they did their filing. My theory about many cops is they do everything backwards: first when they pounce their chests are puffed out and they seem to take great pleasure in siphoning you into the truck but gradually over the night they morph into these shuffling saggyshouldered bureaucrats when it hits them how much paperwork it takes to process a couple of oiks with spraycans - the arresting officer told us at the end “We´re sorry we know the law is shit but gotta do it anyway,” like they get their orgasm first and then go through the getting-to-know-you stuff. He also told me if I wanted I could apply to the council for a patch of wall to spray on to my hearts´ content, I thanked him as sweetly as I could but no. The station was painted in various shades of gray and olive (we discovered a new colour called Rotting Mint) to psych out people by giving them nothing to focus on, but I had a book in my bag, Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man.
Posted by Owen on from Barcelona 10/22 at 10:49 AMowen: was it you who did the stencils you see in the film ‘weapons of mass deception’. they are on street walls in barcelona
mickey: mightn’t the rumour of a genuine bomb scare been have been a way of getting you to drop the fake ones?
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/22 at 11:00 AMdon’t answer that owen.
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/22 at 11:09 AMYou’re right, Michael. i’d put nothing past those nuns.
Owen: Great story and even greater theory, re: cops. You can’t always bank on it but humans in general tend to blow off steam before remembering they’re human.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/22 at 11:26 AMGood Morning, all...and it is a great morning as I just returned from my third yoga class this week in which I was able to perform a handstand without use of a wall for the first time.
I have an NYC police repression story from a while back:
http://wdthu.blogspot.com/2004/11/remembering-2152003-in-new-york-city.html
I may have posted this here before, but what the heck.
I did complete my downliad of “The Salt of the Earth,” but have yet to watch it.
Talk about bomb scares...I worked across the river from the Twin Towers in Jersey City right after 9/11. Our monthly ritual of fear involved a few full building evacutions due to bomb scares or drills for a good 6 or 8 months after that terrible day.
Owen, so true is your statement that cops “do everything backwards: first when they pounce their chests are puffed out and they seem to take great pleasure in siphoning you into the truck but gradually over the night they morph into these shuffling saggyshouldered bureaucrats when it hits them how much paperwork it takes to process a couple of oiks.”
Though I am not positive of the definition of an oik, I believe I fit the description a few times.
Mick, your nun poem reminded me of a punishment me and the guys would receive from our freshman year dorm proctors at boarding school. Except ours involved being punished for one thing or another by being made to run around the dorm in our underwear (no shoes) in the dead of winter through a foot of snow.
captcha: cost
Posted by JOS on from Puerto Rico 10/22 at 11:27 AMdownliad? where’d I get that from? Sounds like a Greek website or something…
captcha: issue(s) as in, I’ve got some.
Posted by JOS on from Puerto Rico 10/22 at 11:30 AMI think the downliad is an Olympic event.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/22 at 11:32 AMhttp://www.thefrown.com/frowners/becomerepublican.swf
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/22 at 12:01 PMOwen: “The station was painted in various shades of gray and olive (we discovered a new colour called Rotting Mint) to psych out people by giving them nothing to focus on, but I had a book in my bag, Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man.” Lovely stuff. You are, of course, writing some larger piece (you’re simply too sharp an observer not to be). Does this figure into it?
Colors: My former business partner and I are Wildean aesthetes, the kind of decadent pervs who flourish in dying epochs, and are each especially color-sensitive. Once upon a time we had a client who shared space with us, a British publisher whose back-office functions we performed for a fee. Color sense is given to soe, withheld from others, and the man was simply absent the sense of design as it is conventionally understood. One bright day Madame and I were contemplating our sunflowers and desultorily dissecting the previous evening’s Oscar gown faux pas parade when our unusually callipygian UPS driver (a career track that, in NYC at least, develops buns of steel in most of its male practicioners) dropped a big box from London on us, smiled nervously, and ran away.
The box was of a size to spike our usual paeans to his droopy pockets, and since it was made even more fascinating by being unannounced and unexpected, well! We descended on the box, sharp implements in a Hindu-goddess array about each of us, and hacked that mother open in about a minute and a half. The contents cascaded out.
Silence.
“Pink,” uttered Madame in tones of thinly veiled revulsion. “Pink. Why, God, why?”
I gave the slithering mound of books the fish eye, noting the faux-50s typography, the hues-of-calamine “halftone” photo in the cover’s background, the author’s name appearing, to my mind at least, to pulsate with the intensity of its logical desire to flee this train wreck.
“Calling this ‘pink’ insults female genitalia. This is Discarded Abortion, no that’s not deliberate enough...this is the color of the cocktail snacks a model heaved bulimically into the Kool-Aid, this is Thrown-Up Shrimp.”
We deigned to handle the books with our own 20 repulsed digits very seldom after that. To this day I regard that unfortunate choice of hue as the single best reason that particular book (a very well-written suspense novel, imagine that!) wasn’t a solid hit in this thriller-obsessed country we call Murrica.
Posted by Mudge on from Workin' for the Weekend 10/22 at 12:07 PMMudge: Born to be Wilde
Here’s a pink book that may have merit:
http://tinyurl.com/cxhaqPosted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/22 at 12:12 PMMZ: “passers-by gawking at our pale skin
covered in goose bumps
nuns draped head to toe in black…
warm “Your strongest, best work comes from immediate and sensory images like this. Very enjoyable poem!
JOS: “Though I am not positive of the definition of an oik, I believe I fit the description a few times.”
You’re an AL fan, James, you ALWAYS fit the definition of “oik.” Can’t wait to see the Astros pound the Sox into another 46 years of pain and loss. The blot of 1919 is unextirpatable.
Michael: “the teachers would drive round the route checking everyone was ok” Am I alone in seeing the humor of GYM TEACHERS driving around to make sure their teen charges were running the entire “cross-country” course? Maybe lead by example, lardass, and run the course your damn self!
What AM I thinking?! “Lead by example,” such retro-think, I am SO sorry all.
Posted by Mudge on from Workin' for the Weekend 10/22 at 12:20 PMBorn to be Wilde?! I think Not! If I am clapped (pun optional) into gaol, it won’t be for slippin’ the pork to some eternally corrupted-since-homosex-obviously-rules-or-we-wouldn’t -make-laws-against-it lovely young man, it will be for...wait, wait, wait...this is Bushmerika....
[sings] Boooornnnnn to beeeee Wiiiiiiiiiilde....
Posted by Mudge on from Workin' for the Weekend 10/22 at 12:27 PMJoe! From yesterday: “Hi again, Mudgkins!
What’d Rosemarie do?”Howdy there, Joe, and a great good day to you this storytelling day. What’re you gonna do to top the India vignette you gave us yesterday?
I came to this Storytelling Saturday with a story in mind to tell, and I didn’t tell it. I told a different one, a funny one (at least I hope y’all got a sniker or two out of it) in place of one that’s unfolding in the roiling maelstrom that’s my life right now. Next Saturdy maybe I’ll feel I hve some distance from it and can shape it to my liking, thence making it a story not a screed.
Archive.org: For those as haven’t, go there at your own risk! It’s like being given the keys to the Harry Ransom Center and the Library of Congress and told to shop quietly.
Captcha: “letters” hoohooohooooo
Posted by Mudge on from Workin' for the Weekend 10/22 at 01:27 PMDear Mudge,
Since my captcha word is “letter,” I’ll post this as a missive.
I very much enjoyed your story and I just got an e-mail from you containing a wonderful suggestion for this space and the Expendables (who will have to wait at least a few days for me to reveal that suggestion). No offense meant by this, but I’m reminded of a joke we’d tell in grade school.
Person 1: How do you keep an idiot in suspense?
Person 2: How?
Person 1: I’ll tell you next week.Again, no offense meant...but that is damn good comedy.
Warning to Expendables: start revving those keyboards.
With love,
Cousin Mickster
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/22 at 01:36 PMJOS, sorry, amidst the madness I forgot to congratulate you on the handstand. How’s the back feeling?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/22 at 01:54 PMPerson 2: C’mon, c’mon, tell me now, I don’t wanna...wait a minute....
Joe, I forgot to say that I make it a habit to leer suggestively at life’s great beauties, hence my aside to Rosemarie.
Captcha: “lewd” Does this program have a snooper setting?
Posted by Mudge on from Workin' for the Weekend 10/22 at 02:18 PMThe back is great right now...nothing like yoga and swimming to cure back pain. I lose weight very quickly...my wife is jealous.
I am in complete suspense waiting to hear about Mudge’s mail.
captcha: FIVE (to one, one in five, no one hear, gets out alive)
Posted by JOS on from Puerto Rico 10/22 at 02:59 PMMudge...I was so impressed that anyone would still leer at me, as you said yesterday, I immediately made an emergency call and had someone rush over with a camera. I will forward a photo, taken yesterday, to Mickey. (And no, I didn’t break the camera.)
Here is my story for today. The act of conscience was a very solemn time for me but as soon as the man in blue said the magic words, “I will have to arrest you”, my mood changed. I had conquered my fear, defeated the life-long held taboo against disobedience, and knew that my job was done for that day. When I arrived at the police station, accompanied by the mighty big guy in blue, he grabbed the protest sign out of my hands. I said, “Why did you do that” and he answered, “Because it’s evidence”. I said, “I know that it is evidence. It is evidence for me and that’s why I need it.” He was not impressed. He leaned my sign up against the back door and put me in solitary confinement. The cell was bare except for a built in wooden bench. Bolted into the bench was a set of heavy metal hand cuffs. The big guy sat me down on the bench and put the cuffs on me. Then he left.
I was suddenly all alone. I looked around the cell and thought that it should not be so bare. It definitely needed a woman’s touch. Perhaps a picture of Malcolm X would be the perfect decorating accessory. I glanced down to the cuffs that encircled my wrists. I started to examine them because I had never seen a pair close up like this before. Suddenly I realized, that because I am so small, I could easily slip the cuffs off. AH, I thought, I have invented a new game...slip the cuffs off and then slip them back on. I played my new game for a little while but then the thought of my sign popped into my mind. I suddenly realized that I could slip out of the cuffs, go around the corner, retrieve my sign, and get back into my cell and re-cuff myself. Wow, visions of a jail break danced through my head.
I quietly slipped out of the cuffs, tip-toed to the doorway of my cell, looked out, and made a mad dash towards the back door. All I wanted was my sign. To be continued…Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 10/22 at 03:38 PMHow do, Miss Rosemarie, ma’am. What sane person WOULDN’T leer suggestively at a lady who writes this:
“I was suddenly all alone. I looked around the cell and thought that it should not be so bare. It definitely needed a woman’s touch. Perhaps a picture of Malcolm X would be the perfect decorating accessory.”Really! I ask you! Is this a resistable soul? No!
And, he said sotto voce, I hope you mean that about “to be cntinued.” MZ’s got Ideas....
Posted by Mudge on from Workin' for the Weekend 10/22 at 03:57 PMAs much as I hate to leave before hearing the end of Rosemarie’s story, Michele and I are off to a party in the People’s Republic of Brooklyn. (I just hope I can catch some of the World Series later.)
See ya soon, Expendables…
Captcha word: soon
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/22 at 04:47 PMMy wife used to handcuff me, Rosemarie, but that’s a story for a different venue, I suppose.
Hi Mudge and Rosemarie and Mickey and JOS and Michael.
I’m tired today, and grumpy, confused, easily distracted - and I just learned that they’re about to pass a state wide smoking ban in Washington State. I’m disturbed, as I was hoping to soon visit a friend in Seattle.I learned recently that the great playwright August Wilson spent considerable time writing and quietly sitting over coffee in an old haunt of mine in Seattle, where I, too, used to sit and smoke and write and ponder. I was looking forward to returning to this greasy little place, The Mecca Cafe, for some coffee and a few smokes and a few sad and wonderful memories.
Well, I suppose I should be grateful that the people of Washington will now be protected from dirtbags such as myself.“They” might have “gone to work” on poverty, hunger, child abuse, abuse of women, racism, elder abuse, substandard housing, lack of health care, organized crime, animal abuse, lack of real education for huge swaths of the population, auto pollution, corporate & industrial pollution, corporate welfare, or generalized government looting of the public. However, they chose to prohibit people from setting up “smokers restaurants” and shops… On the front door of The Mecca, there used to be a huge sign reading: “Smokers Welcome. Nonsmokers Beware!”
I guess this left many non-smokers confused about whether or not they would find this place a pleasant environment. Many must have wandered in, only to be stunned to find themselves subjected to secondhand smoke. Now, at least, these poor folks will be protected from such deceptive practices by the government.Well, as usual, I found something to blab on about. “I rant, therefore I am...” someone said.
I’ve been enjoying the conversation here, folks. Thanks.Posted by joe on from Oregon 10/22 at 05:04 PMMickey,
I didn’t know that you have a criminal past! .. Never mind - I still am a fan!
And hi to everybody else on this comment thread,
HelgaPosted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 10/22 at 05:49 PMOoh so many great replies. Michael, I didn´t see that film but will search it out. At the moment there is a guy stencilling Weapons of Mass Distraction with a teevee under it.
JOS, an oik is an urchin who ought to to know better.
Mudge, I´m 45,000 words into a larger work, 5 chapters out of ten-twelve. The incident certainly helped with a themes I´ve been riffing on, indeed I´m finding this whole city so inspiring it´d be more difficult to come out of it without a novel. Thank you for your story, I enjoyed it immensely.Posted by Owen on from Barcelona 10/22 at 08:04 PMOwen: http://www.wmdthefilm.com
Mudge: the teachers excuse was that some people were faster and some were slower so they had to keep an eye on everyone as much as they could. it obviously didn’t work as, like i said, we would take the bus then stop for cigarettes and stuff!
joe: we are just about to get a national smoking ban in all bars, clubs etc. workplace ban has been in place for a few years. smokes r more expensie here than anywhere else too - £10 for 20 (i think that works out at about $9)
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/23 at 06:32 AMoops - typo - that should read £5 for 20 - which is about $9. i was converting the currency in my head faster than i was typing!
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/23 at 06:34 AM
Next entry: Just my imagination...
Previous entry: My new book...and the salt of the earth
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
