I'm Facebook pals with my 16-year-old nephew Whalen. He's a high school sophomore in Westchester, and I noticed recently that he'd posted some pics from a school field trip to New York City. The theme of the trip, I gather, was to visit some of the key sites from J.D. Salinger's beloved novel, "The Catcher in the Rye." They hit Grand Central Station, the carousel in Central Park, Bethesda Fountain, The American Museum of Natural History, the lagoon at the south end of the park (where the ducks are) and a few other spots. To look at the pics, it's fairly obvious that Whalen and his pals thought it was all a bit hokey, but I thought trip was fairly inspired. I wish my school had put together such an outing.
I was first tasked with reading "The Catcher in the Rye" in eighth grade. While inarguably troubled, Salinger's protagonist, the infamous Holden Caufield, almost seemed like a role model. Sarcastic, witty and occasionally acerbic, Holden's observations of the world around him were both hugely entertaining and oddly familiar. While Holden is ultimately a confused, vulnerable misfit, his propensity for wry bullshit and his deeply held convictions (his overriding disdain for "phoniness") cast him in an entirely sympathetic, almost heroic light to me. Even as his trajectory spirals further out of control, you can't help but root for him. My classmates were similarly fond of the book. I remember we all had to get up at one point and give reports about Salinger's text. I vividly remember each of us -- myself included -- routinely mispronouncing the name of Holden's little sister, Phoebe (we all referred to her as "Foab").
I don't re-read books very often, but I've repeatedly paged through my copy of "The Catcher in the Rye" (I still have my dog-eared original paperback from eighth grade). J.D. Salinger, of course, went on to mythically reject his fame and virtually all society around him. "The Catcher in the Rye," meanwhile, was leant further mystique over the years -- arguably to its detriment -- by the notion that it's a big favorite with serial killers (proponents of this theory often point to Holden's exclamation that his favorite hunting hat is a "people-shooting hat"). Would-be Reagan assassin John Hinkley was purportedly a big fan, as was John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman. Personally speaking, I'm not totally sold on the theory that "Catcher in the Rye" is some kind of coded killer's manifesto -- that the character of Holden Caufield is the proto-Travis Bickle -- but I'll leave that debate to English teachers, historians and conspiracy theorists.
Inspired by Whalen's photos, I dug out my weathered copy of "Catcher" this past weekend and read it by the fire at my mom's place out in Quogue. It's somewhat strange to read it from my current perspective, as upon my first reading of the text in 1980, Holden was a few years older than me and seemed implausibly more sophisticated. While his flaws, contradictions and wounds are more apparent from this side of the age-fence, I found my umpteenth reading just as captivating as my first. Like countless other folks (cold-blooded killers and law-abiding citizens alike), I'll always cherish "The Catcher in the Rye."
As a slightly eerie coda to this anecdote, I was paging through The New York Times on our way home from Quogue today, and stumbled upon the following article. Oddly enough, J.D. Salinger turns 90 tomorrow.
So, we're out here at my Mother's place in Quogue this week. Peg and I packed up the kids and boarded a Saturday morning Jitney (under normal circumstances, I would absolutely never suggest boarding a Jitney with two kids under the age of 5, but surprisingly, they both handled it pretty well). Being that I'm not due back at the office until a week from today, our plans are quite vague as to when we're heading back into the city. In the interim, we're simply enjoying the quiet of the country. And quiet it is.
There isn't a great deal to do in Quogue in December. Sure, the beach is pretty and whatnot, but it's generally too cold to do much. I've gone on a few misty walks (and taken some lovely pictures along the way). The kids have been busily making a mess of my mother's home. In recent years, however, I seem to have developed an acute allergy to something in this house. It could be dust or it could be mold, but there are certain rooms I just cannot spend a great deal of time in, lest I start sneezing and wheezing. It's not much fun.
To stave this off, I volunteer for a lot of missions. Oh, we need milk? I'll hop in the car and go get some. We need to take trash to the dump? I'll handle it. We need more wine? I'll got pick some up. Mercifully, my mother replaced the dead battery in the crappy Ford Taurus, so I've had a car to zip around in. Not sure what I'd have done without it.
Today was no exception. After a morning in the nearby playground with some friends of ours, we fed the kids lunch and put them down for their naps. I then volunteered to go out and pick up some groceries in nearby Westhampton for this evening's dinner. I hopped back in the car and fired up the radio. I have a set of old compact discs in the car, but I've become bored with most of them, so am now going back to WRCN's steady force-feeding of 'classic rock.' WRCN is endearingly adamant about not playing anything that was recorded after, say, 1982, so there's a whole lot of Pat Benatar, Asia, Billy Squier, Bob Seger and J. Geils Band. It cab be entertaining in (very) small doses.
By the time I pulled into Westhampton, though, I'd just about had enough (this after a seven song block of Billy Joel). There hasn't been a fully functioning record store in Westhampton in over a decade, so I stepped into the Rite Aid on Main Street to peruse their sickly compact disc selection (don't laugh -- it's a miracle that they even have a compact disc selection). With low expectations, I thumbed through the dregs and struck oil. Squeezed in-between a Hall & Oates Christmas album and a Best-Of by Great White, I pulled out a copy of The Velvet Underground & Nico, its brilliant Warhol banana cover beaming out of the racks like a beacon of light in a roiling sea of darkness. And for a paltry nine dollars no less. I snatched it up and strode victoriously to the register.
I've owned this album in virtually every conceivable format in the twenty-four years since I initially heard it. The Velvets' seminal debut album was first introduced to me by a fellow Denison University freshman named Jay in 1985. After we'd bonded over a mutual love of The Clash and Dead Kennedys, Jay turned me onto some further-flung fare like the Discipline-era King Crimson, Funhouse by the Stooges and his personal favorites, New York City's own Velvet Underground. They were dark, scary, rude, abrasive, strange, dangerous and impeccably cool. I instantly fell in love with them. And I've loved them ever since.
So, while yes, I already own this album on compact disc, I couldn't say no to a nine dollar bargain to relieve my ears from WRCN's middle-of-the-road menu. Back in the car, I slipped the disc into the player and deceptively spritely bells of "Sunday Morning" filled the car, followed immediately by the pounding, urgent punch of "Waiting for the Man." By the time "Venus in Furs" came on, I'd instinctively slipped on my black Ray-Bans as I rolled my Mom's crappy car through the streets of Westhampton. Sure, there is something deeply incongruous about cranking a song by sneery junkies about whips, bondage and sexual depravity while cruising through the leafy country lanes of a posh Hampton enclave (let alone while on a mission to buy broccoli, milk and potatoes), but damn if it didn't sound great.
Hey, y'all. Pardon the relative slowdown in posting, but I'm out of town at the moment with relatively limited computer access. In the interim, please enjoy this lovingly rendered interpretation of Queen's signature opus, "Bohemian Rhapsody," brought to life via the magic of stop-motion animation and a whole lotta Legos. Crank it.
Christmas Day didn't go quite according to plan, but it was a lovely one anyway. Originally, we were to drive my Mom's crappy Ford Taurus out to the wilds of Essex Fells, New Jersey to ring in the holiday with my step-cousins. While I wasn't super-enthused about the concept of braving the New Jersey turnpike on a busy holiday, my Aunt Lesea always whips up fantastic Christmas feast and it's always a happy, fun occasion. At the last minute, however, Mom called to regretfully inform us that the battery in the Taurus had suddenly expired. We had no wheels.
Renting a car at the last minute on Christmas Day was laughably out of the question, and the logistics of catching a bus from Port Authority with two little children in tow seemed hellishly unsound at best. After much soul-searching and fretting, we called to deliver the bad news that we would not be able to make it. As such, we spent Christmas Day at home, leisurely basking in the holiday glow while our children went happily haywire.
For a guy who routinely claimed to not really want anything for Christmas, I made out pretty well. My lovely wife gave me a splendid watch from Shanghai Tang which I'm cherishing. Not only does it mean I can finally give The Punisher a well-deserved rest, but I'm of the opinion that Shanghai Tang could make an object as banal as a shoehorn -- and I'd feverishly covet it. So, a Shanghai Tang watch is a thing of exceptionally cool splendor. I don't deserve it. On top of that, I got a couple of pairs of skull-festooned socks from Rugby, a lovely stripey sweater, a lovely Japanese bottle-opener, a gift-certificate to a local reflexology place and the limited edition U2 remasters box set. Overall, not a bad haul.
For my myriad crimes, however, I was tasked with putting together this massive "Fairy Wonderland" play set from my mother-in-law for little Charlotte. Made of no fewer than fifteen purportedly interlocking wooden pieces, this unwieldy plaything found me sitting on the floor, grappling with its garishly-colored wooden panels and furrowing my brow at its wordlessly indecipherable instructions. Eventually, I managed to piece it all together, but not without letting out a few exasperated exclamations along the way. All told, the finished product is pretty damn impressive.
After an enjoyable, wrapping-strewn morning, we stepped out and actually went to Christmas Mass at St. Joseph's on 6th Avenue. The statues therein, contrary to popular expectation, did not start bleeding when I entered the church. Afterwards, we repaired back home for some napping. Oliver, of course, was having none of it. Having not slept a great deal the night before and having been whipped up into a present-fueled frenzy, Oliver had crossed over into the bug-eyed persona heretofore referred to as "Christmas Bobby." Sleep was right out of the question. He spent the next few hours jumping up and down excitedly. Even now, despite the fact that we've put them down, he's still up and babbling happily with Charlotte. Amazing how far a little holiday cheer can go.
We still have a few family-oriented events in the next couple of days and a few more presents to go. Right now, Peggy's in the kitchen preparing some bacon-wrapped filet mignons (!!!), while I'm using my newly acquired bottle opener to crack open another frosty Sapporo. Life has been worse.
Over the years, I've penned a couple of posts about how the premature influx of Christmas music turns me into Grinchy McScrooge (especially when forced to endure tireless rotations and sickly R&B incarnations of "Sleigh Bells" and the like while doing my laundry in our building's basement, i.e. "the Christmas Prison"). But it occurred to me a day or so ago that here we are in late December and I haven't heard Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" a single time. Really, not even once. And while it inarguably launched a thousand preening pop stars to get all faux-altruistic, it still brings me right back to high school. While that's not always a good thing, in this case it is. So here's a Christmas gift that maybe only I will enjoy. Joyeux Noel, y'all.
Continuing on from my mission yesterday, I stepped back out into the freezing drizzle this morning to go hit some shops downtown to finish up my Christmas shopping. My first destination was to be Pearl River. If you're not familiar with it, Pearl River is a somewhat sprawling emporium of goods with an Asian theme. It's cool and -- most enjoyably -- it's cheap. When you remove items procured therein from the context of chintzy mass-production, they're lovely to behold. The original location of Pearl River was over on Canal Street, but they moved to a comparatively upscale spot on Broadway a few years back. You should certainly go check it out.
In any case, as I strolled down Mercer Street, I saw a sight that made my heart sink. Just crossing Broome Street, I looked up towards 55 Mercer. The entire building was obscured by scaffolding. Under closer scrutiny, I saw a massive sign hanging in the ground floor window, soliciting the entire building for rent. I frowned.
As I wrote in this lengthy post from two years back, I spent some time back in the late 80s and early 90s working at 55 Mercer Street Gallery as a gallery sitter. This was back when the neighborhood still retained a fading whiff of its bohemian character (as opposed to the gaudy shopping district it is today). The gallery occupied that space at 55 Mercer for thirty-nine years, making it -- I believe -- the second oldest art co-op in the city. I can only guess that the spiraling rent finally got the better of them. I don't remember the last time I ducked into the gallery, but I loved knowing it was there -- a last vestige of Soho's arty past. Now gone forever.
With a bit of Googling, I learned that the gallery has since moved to a new space in Long Island City. While I'm relieved that they're still in operation, it still makes me sad that they can no longer afford to stay in the neighborhood that spawned them, but then -- that does seem to be the way of this city.
With only a fleeting clutch of days before the actual holiday, it seems I'm deplorably behind in my Christmas shopping. As such, I seized the opportunity during the kids' nap-time on Saturday -- foregoing some other much-needed tasks like a getting a haircut (being that I'm starting to resemble a member of Kajagoogo) -- to go procure a few remaining, elusive items. It was somewhat bitterly cold out and the streets were caked with ice and slush after Friday's "storm" (sooo much bellyaching going on over really not so much -- what's happened to your spine, New York?), but I had to do it.
For my mission out onto the slick, slippery Manhattan streets, I dialed up a random selection of Rush on my iPod and was on my way. I can hear some of you groan already. "Rush? Rush!Really??" Yeah, fuckin' Rush and yes, really! While I may be prone to waxing rhapsodic here to oft-nauseating length about the myriad glories of Punk Rock, I'm still a dyed-in-the-wool Rush fan. I've been so since about 1980, circa the release of Permanent Waves. Ain't about to change now.
Rush has never been hip, god bless'em. Arguably too proggy, twiddly, geeky and/or shrieky, they've been lambasted by all and sundry as the ultimate nerd band, rivaled only by Devo (another band I'm slavishly devoted to). Championed by greaseball heshers and bespectacled computer programmers alike, Rush deftly fuse dizzying musical chops, a Zepplinesque propensity for sonic wallop and a tireless penchant for indecipherably eggheaded lyrics (penned by eight-armed Ayn Rand disciple/drummer Neil Peart). They're not tough. They're not sexy. You don't find girls shedding their tops at their shows. But still -- they're Rush. They wrote "Spirit of the Radio," "Passage to Bangkok" and "Subdivisions." You didn't. They rock. You don't.
I remember buying Moving Pictures, Rush's arguable "breakthrough" album on a snowy day in 1981 at a long-since-vanished Disc-O-Mat on Lexington Avenue. I was fourteen years old and distraught about something (what do fourteen year olds generally get distraught about?) Prompted by regular airings of the single, "Limelight," on WPLJ, I slapped down my five bucks for the glossy vinyl LP and took it home. I remember routinely playing it while paging through issues of "The X-Men" (this was during the golden age circa the "Dark Phoenix" saga, with John Byrne doing the illustrating). Rush served as the perfect soundtrack. It quickly became one of those albums I knew back to front.
I continued to furtively follow Rush religiously, even as I was further warming to the comparatively rudimentary thrills of Hardcore Punk. While Rush couldn't hold a candle to bands like Black Flag or Bad Brains in terms of sheer, visceral catharsis, I couldn't walk away. I remember initially chortling incredulously at their seemingly shameless attempts to mimic the Police on Signals (though said album did contain the afore-mentioned "Subdivisions"). I remember thrilling to Alex Lifeson's giddily shrill solo on "Distant Early Warning" on Grace Under Pressure. I remember standing around in the damp cold on some windswept November night with some high school friends in Central Park. Just off the corner of East 79th & Fifth Avenue, a gaggle of my classmates were often inclined to congregate like hooligans with a boombox (I believe we referred to this spot as "Club 79"). The musical fare was usually a mix of Run DMC, U2, AC/DC and -- when my friend Mike was at the helm -- 2112 by Rush. We'd all be standing around chatting, but when Alex Lifeson bursts into that epic riff during "Temples of Syrinx" (we're talking definitively at 02:45), we'd all instinctively stop and air-guitar dutifully. These were happy times.
A year or two after graduating from college, I got a job at LIFE Magazine as a copy assistant. One of my co-workers was a woman named Leslie who was inexplicably friends with Rush. When they came to town that year (on the Roll the Bones tour in 1992), Leslie got me backstage to meet the band. Lifeson was cool and chatty. Lead singer Geddy Lee was mellow and dry and Peart was literally backstage sitting in the lotus position reading Nietsche. I shit you not. Geddy gave me a t-shirt (designed by Septic Death member/Metallica-favorite, Pushead). I cherish it to this day. Better still, we all went out to dinner after the show to Nick & Eddy's in Soho (long gone). I dined with Rush! Beat that, haters!
Anyway, blah blah blah. I believe I've now established that I'm a geeky Rush fan. Truthfully, I haven't kept up with them as much as I used to, but I still have loads of time for them. When this song filled my headphones this afternoon, it was all I could do not to frantically air-drum along with the estimable Mr. Peart. The version of this track -- "Xanadu," originally from A Farewell to Kings -- I listened to this afternoon was from their live 1998 album, Different Stages, but the definitive version for me remains the version below from their 1981 live album, Exit... Stage Left. During my freshman year of college, I used to spend many a high-volume evening playing the entire third side of that double album ("Broon's Bane," "The Trees" and "Xanadu", which all blended seamlessly into one another in a rocktastic mix) while cracking open numerous cans of cheap beer. Again, happy times.
Play it loud.
HOLIDAY RUSH REDUX: After I completed this post, I was chatting with my similarly inclined pal Rob B., who recently sent a hilarious rendition of Rush's unrepentantly ludicrous epic, "The Trees" by one Richard Cheese (geddit?) I enjoy it strenuously. So should you:
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