Flaming Pablum

No More Moondancing

Just heard about this one this morning from my friend Rob. The Moondance Diner is evidently the latest victim of the glass condo sprawl. A fine little eatery tucked at the bottom end of 6th Avenue, just above Canal Street, the Moondance Diner was already an endangered species. That it's being tweezed like a blackhead from its long-time roost shouldn't surprise anyone at this stage. Clearly, nothing is sacred and there's no room for sentimentality in the ruthless realm of real estate. Oh, and contrary to popular belief, the Moondance Diner is not the diner featured in Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" (which, as I've labouriously mentioned elsewhere on this weblog, remains my favorite film of all time). While the Moondance would've made perfect sense (it being situated, like the film, right in Soho), Scorsese actually used the River Diner across from the Javitz Center up in Hell's Kitchen for that location. Go figure. Here's a shot of my daughter, Charlotte, from the tail end of last summer, after a robustly satisfying-if-artery-clogging meal at the Moondance.

Depressing Cedar Tavern Shot of The Day

Yeah, I know I said I was done talking about this, but I walk by it every damn day, and each time,  it's in a further state of ravaged disembowlment. This was it this morning, right before Mother Nature decided to dump nine thousand gallons of rain on my non-umbrella-carrying ass.

The new White Stripes material....

....is a shrill chore to listen to.  Evidently, the kilt Jack White took to wearing during his stint with the Raconteurs (see pic) has gone right to his head, as this new track, courtesy of Idolator, sounds like -- to paraphrase two co-workers -- a sickly cross between bad Yes and the score to "Riverdance."

Proceed with caution.

So Hungry, So Cranky

As a parent, you hear it everyday. In playgrounds, supermarkets, on the street, in the elevator --- whenever a child cries, someone invariably says "Oh, they're tired." It's a catch-all rationalization that seeks to explain and summarily excuse any bad behavior on the child's part (the other one being, "oh, they're hungry!") I still remember it being used in regards to my bad behavior -- and even as a wee lad, I remember thinking it was the most patronizing statement conceivable. "No, I'm NOT tired, goddammit," I envisioned saying, limited by my unsophisticated vocabulary, "I have a PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE, and I will NOT be so brusquely dismissed!!" Nine times out of ten, of course, they were right. While I might not have realized it at the time, I was probably tired (or, alternately, hungry). And as highly evolved and complex as we all like to think we are, when we're tired and/or hungry, we get cranky, depressed and irrational. It's just a fact.

In recent days, I've been feeling kinda down in the mouth (or "experiencing a disturbance in the Force" as my geekier brethren might say). I can't really put my finger on it. I mean, there are a few items currently in my life that are troubling me, but by and large, they're all under control. Still, I've been feeling sluggish, on edge and even argumentative (more so than usual). I haven't been able to pinpoint, however, what it is exactly that's been bugging me.

My wife, conversely, knows herself inside and out. She's hugely fond of napping (a luxury that, unfortunately, once children enter the picture, isn't always so easy to accommodate). When they nap in the middle of the day, however, Peggy tries to nap too. I don't. While I hugely enjoy sleeping, I just look at the kids' nap-time on weekends as an opportunity to concentrate on other projects (which invariably means wasting time on the computer or ripping compact discs to my iTunes or paying bills that are already way late). Before I know it, they're awake again, and the dung-throwing monkey parade begins anew. Again, Peggy is smart enough to seize the opportunity to re-charge her batteries.

Similarly, Peggy knows *immediately* when she's hungry, and knows that if she doesn't sate that need with the quickness, things are going to get testy. For some reason, it's not as crystal clear to me. I'll beg off eating any semblance of a proper breakfast (opting instead for two or three…or four…high powered cups of coffee) because I "don't have the time" or am late. I've always got something more pressing to do, and god forbid I take two minutes to eat something.

If Charlotte and Oliver haven't napped during the day, by the time I get home from work, they're practically psychotic. Reason, restraint, decorum and hygiene all go right out the window. It's kinda like the final scene of "Apocalypse Now," if it had been cast with toddlers. Basically, it's fairly cut and dry with them. If they don't get enough sleep and they don't get enough to eat, havoc ensues. Lately, I've been wracking my brain about what's bugging me. Am I still mad that the clown at the deli put my BLT on whole-wheat toast instead of white? Am I just bummed because since I shaved off my beard, I'm looking much jowlier than I'd prefer? Am I really still pissed that Scarlett Johannsen is performing with the Jesus & Mary Chain?

I think the real answer is the very same cause and effect that pertains to my kids. I'm tired. And I'm hungry. So if you're like me, before you waste hours of precious time psychoanalyzing yourself and fretting a new part in your hair, why not just take a nap.

And for god's sake, eat something.

Never Understand

I honestly have no idea why this little news item bugs me so much. Maybe it's because Scarlett J. was barely twelve months old when the J&MC's classic Psychocandy was released or maybe it's because "Match Point" was a towering stack of shit, but in any case, it pisses me right off. What's next? Is Cameron Diaz going to get onstage with Throbbing Gristle? Humbug!!!

It's Just That Type of Monday

Chumley's is Still Standing.....kinda

I meant to post this earlier in the week, but life, taste and time simply did not permit. While still indescribably trivial, since I started posting about it week or two ago, I might as well follow-up.

Last weekend, prior to the arrival of the record-breaking rain, I took both of my little kids for a lengthy stroll, allowing my long-suffering Missus some well-earned quiet time. Since I positively loathe our local playground in Washington Square Park with every angry fiber of my conflicted being, I thought I'd treat Charlotte and Oliver to a visit to a comparatively far-flung playground over on St.Luke's Place (a strip near'n'dear to my heart given its prominent role in the 1967 thriller, "Wait Until Dark" which -- despite starring the otherwise cloying Audrey Hepburn -- kicks a man-sized platter of ass). Honestly speaking, the elements that send me into a teeth-gritting rage at the Washington Square Playground (too much exposed concrete, not enough swings, too many rambunctious bigger kids keenly deserving of a swift slap across the gums) are equally represented at the St. Luke's Playground, but I love getting out of our little corner of the world to explore the adjacent neighborhoods.

Weaving our heavy-duty double-stroller (which looks a bit like a Blackhawk helicopter without a top propeller) through the meandering byways of the West Village, I was instantly reminded of the Chumley's collapse I'd posted about fairly recently. I steered my pint-sized platoon towards Bedford and Barrow to check it out.

As you can see from the pic at the top of this post (click on it to enlarge), it really ain't looking very promising (considering it normally looks like this). That all said, there was this notice (again, click on the pic to enlarge), which defiantly insists that Chumley's is merely closed for "restoration." We'll see.

Again, it's been quite some time since I've been able to regularly darken the doors of any drinking establishment -- fabled landmark or not -- but this is less about my affinity for places to get drunk in and more about simply lamenting the unfortunate changes of a storied urban landscape.

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah

I have no real reason for posting this other than it's a rapturously joyous song from one of my favorite bands that never fails to cheer me up. Here's the Wedding Present appearing on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" (I believe) in the balmy, carefree days of 1994 (a massive year for music, it should be noted) performing a euphoric little love ditty called "Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah" from their unjustly overlooked album, Watusi. Being that this has been one of those weeks when absolutely everything feels wrong, I just felt it was time for something that makes everything feel right. For me, this is one of those things. Enjoy.

Spring Breaks Its Promise

Despite the fact that it's routinely the season when my senses come under siege by the tiny empire of Pollen's tireless armies, I usually enjoy Spring, and cannot help but look forward to it every year. I'm regularly reminded of Springtime at my college in Central Ohio. Denison University was situated in the small town of Granville, nestled within the rolling, verdant hills (uncharacteristic of the state in question) of the somewhat unfortunately-named Licking County. Come Spring, the campus would become almost-maddeningly green. The air would thicken with the lush promise of the impending Summer. The warming temperatures would drive virtually every student out onto the various wide rectangles of grass to bask and frolic. Windows would be thrown open, and music would rapturously echo throughout the bowl-shaped campus in an impromptu celebration of the season of rebirth. I have a clutch of played-to-death mixtapes from these years that never fail to take me back to the era, inexorably linked to my memories of Springtime.

This Spring hasn't quite turned out as rosily. On Sunday, a record breaking Nor'easter spread its vast grey wings over the tri-state area, dumping more rain on this city than it has experienced in a century. While I grumbled about having that unrelenting wetness make things inconvenient (the strains of Zeppelin's cover of "When The Levee Breaks" -- boom - BASH -- boom'b'boom -- BASH, etc. -- on an endless loop in my head), I was later to learn that up in Westchester, the families of both my sister and one of my sisters-in-law had to evacuate after flood waters penetrated the basements of their respective homes.

A day later, of course, those grisly events took place on the campus of Virginia Tech.  Over at the Job, we've been monitoring every tragic, inexplicable development and exploring ever angle of the story, attempting to approach it - to paraphrase a colleague -- from a place of empathy that doesn't ring as rote and hollow as the variety you're likely to find on CNN, Fox et al. Students on the Virginia Tech campus have been forever robbed of the very sort've experience and associations I was just waxing rhapsodic about in the first paragraph and so much more. It is not a happy story.

So, while the calendar might be telling me it's Spring, I'm just not feeling it.

Glory & Hell

I first met my friend Sean back sometime in the early `90s. I was working at LIFE Magazine at the time as an editorial assistant and freelance writing on the side for some dubious music mags like the tragically named Huh! and Creem (a periodical that shared the name and "Boy Howdy!" mascot as its fabled predecessor, but not the insouciant quality that made the original so renowned). Sean attended the same class at the New School as my good friend Rob. Both Rob and Sean were aspiring writers. I suppose I was an aspiring writer at the time too, but these two gents were (and remain) well beyond my league. In any case, I used to go meet Rob after the weekly evening class in question upstairs at The Cedar Tavern, and Sean would usually come along to help us put away ill-advisedly sizable quantities of beer, as one does when one's young and single in New York City.

When not working on his own writing, Sean had a suitably flash job at The New Yorker. If I recall correctly, Sean initially started at the magazine as a runner for the art department. I remember being livid with envy (and still am, actually) that Sean came to own a large manila envelope emblazoned with his own name, scrawled in the slashy, inky font that is the signature hand of Gerald Scarfe. Scarfe is a revered British cartoonist whose work came to define the long-running satire mag, Private Eye, but was near and dear to rock-addled nogoodnicks like myself for having done all the artwork and animation for both the album and film of Pink Floyd's The Wall. In any case, Scarfe left a print for Sean to pick up, and slapped it in the envelope. Were I Sean, that envelope would be in a damn frame right now, but knowing Sean, he has it tucked away somewhere gathering dust. It was indirectly through Sean, incidentally, that I landed my freelance writing gig for the "Goings On About Town" listings, so hats off to him for that.

In any case, Sean gradually worked his way into the fiction and poetry department of the mag, which seemed considerably better suited to his sensibilities. In the interim, he and I had become fast friends (despite the fact that I by and large positively loathe poetry). Sadly, he and Rob had a falling out over a girl These things happen, of course. The girl in question, ironically, fell off the map so soon afterwards that I doubt any of the players involved can even remember her name. Regardless, I stayed in touch with Sean, as he was tirelessly hilarious company and a good friend.

Though our interests were largely aligned, Sean and I were fairly different folks. Much like my situation, his parents were somewhat messily divorced, and he spent his formative years in San Francisco, a bit like a hybrid of Matthew Broderick's Ferris Bueller and Judd Nelson's John Bender (if such can be imagined). As his family situation became more difficult, he gradually succumbed to the delinquent nature of the latter, lessening his grip on the suave confidence of the former and spent a bit of his adolescence in reform schools. He'd occasionally mention an anecdote or two about these times, and they were always amusing, if slightly harrowing-sounding at times.

Over the course of the 90's, Sean lived in a startling variety of locales, including a massive loft space in Long Island City, a houseboat moored on the 79th Street boat basin, and he even logged a few years on The Yankee, a retired ferry once used to shuttle weekenders back and forth from Block Island, anchored at the pier across from N. Moore Street in Tribeca. Sean's address changed fairly routinely. During the colder months during his spell on the Yankee, we often found him sleeping on our couch, as it got a bit frigid on the boat.

Though I was technically the Manhattan native, Sean maintained (and still does) a remarkable knack for discovering the coolest places to hang out, eat, drink and socialize. While I'd otherwise have seen fit to hit the same nine or ten yawnsome watering holes in the East Village like the horrific cliche I'd been aspiring to become, Sean would always know the bizarre, tucked-away sushi bar in midtown, the far-flung martini lounge on the Lower East Side or the so-hard-to-find-it's-positively-mythological authentic dim sum emporium in Chinatown. The man was positively a divining rod for hip and esoteric. There's a truly dreadful photograph of Sean and I at some random Vietnamese barbecue restaurant just off Canal Street (located just across the wall from the Beastie Boys' fabled barber shop of choice). I'm depicted wearing Doc Martens, a flannel shirt, a Blues Explosion t-shirt and a goatee like some godawful poster boy of Generation Grunge. Gimme a break, it was the 90's.

Eventually, Sean settled on a raw space on Mott Street around the corner from the old Knitting Factory. I remember checking the space out with him very early on. The strip in question still retained the whiff of urban squalor it boasted when "Mean Streets" was shot there, and owed nothing to the Eurotrashy, Hampton-esque hell hole it is now. It was an industrial space in the very early process of conversion and looked slightly like the sort've room the Mob might take you too when they needed to "convince" you of something. "You've got to be kidding, Sean!" I scoffed, "This'll take years to convert into a livable space." Wisely not heeding my pessimism, Sean went ahead and bought the place for a song, hired an endearingly eccentric contractor from Chinatown named Mr. Kam to do some shoddy demolition and construction, and quickly turned the place around into the coolest Manhattan apartment you're ever likely to see. His neighbors now include Moby, and Sonic Youth and the Beastie Boys use the basement level of his apartment building as rehearsal space.

This entire time, Sean had been busily writing. At first, his project was a novel. He worked on it ceaselessly, eventually giving up his gig at The New Yorker to devote more time on it (he could get away with such things). I never asked to read it, as he was fairly serious about it, and I didn't want to put him on the spot until he felt ready to show it to anyone. He did show me a chapter or two early on. Eventually, he decided to pen a memoir. "Say what?" I laughed "Sean, you're barely into your thirties, whose going to give a rolling rat fuck about your damn silly life?" Again, Sean wisely dismissed my pessimism and got right to work on it.

Sean's memoir, "Oh The Glory Of It All," was published by Penguin in 2005 to vast acclaim and even logged some time on the best seller list. I mentioned it here, actually. In the ensuing years, both Sean and I got married, have both sired a couple of kids and are still great, close friends, as are children are likewise becoming.

On a more bizarre note, and the initial impetus for this post, in a rather strange development, Sean's mother -- a truly interesting character in her own right -- has just published her own book, "Oh The Hell Of It All." I haven't gotten my hands on a copy as yet, but I'm sure it'll be amusing.

Sean recently launched a website, which you should all check out by clicking right here. There has even been talk of turning his book into a film.