Flaming Pablum

Fishbowl City

I've had the rare pleasure in recent weeks of spending a few nights out on the town. Being the father of two little kids doesn't really afford me the right to prowl the nocturnal city that much, so I relish the opportunity every time I'm allowed. Most of these evenings found me traipsing about some old haunts in the East Village, the Lower East Side, Soho and TriBeCa. My misgivings about the myriad changes to these respective neighborhoods pretty much all fall by the wayside when I'm let out and about. I'm invariably just happy to be out past the kids' bedtime.

Much has been said over the last five or six years about the exhibitionist aesthetic rife in the architecture of all the new buildings downtown. Bricks and mortar have been evidently replaced by steel beams and wide, shimmering sheets of translucent, tinted glass. By day, these hulking crystal monoliths almost block out the sky, casting chilly shade on streets once bathed in sunlight. By night, however, it's an entirely different affair, and one that I've only recently taken notice of.

One night last week, as I was walking down Ludlow Street to meet some friends at Motor City, I passed under the unimaginatively-named tower on the corner of East Houston, The Ludlow, and was able to peer directly into several homes. Again, during the day, it doesn't look like much, but in the gloom of night, individual apartments were lit up in disarming detail. I was able to see bookshelves, CD collections, pets and massive widescreen televisions that take up whole walls (that seems to be the norm in these places). It's a moot, dated point to make, but I'm still struck that people are now living above a space that used to be a desolate parking lot for eons. It still amazes me, for some reason.

Walking down the Bowery on Friday night while en route to see Mission of Burma on Delancey Street, I glanced up at a radically refurbished loft across from what had been CBGB. As it was outfitted with vast windows in accordance with the new trend, I was able to look right into a little domestic drama with surprisingly little obstruction. On my way down to a restaurant in Tribeca on Saturday night, I passed a relatively brand new building on Varick Street, and was unsolicitedly treated to the sight of a groin-scratching, paunchy middle-aged guy in his boxer shorts watching "Superbad" (again, his flatscreen was big enough for me to glean that otherwise irrelevant detail). Speaking as a paunchy middle-aged guy myself, I can't imagine how he feels comfortable putting on such a display, but I guess I'm just old fashioned like that.

I suppose it's just the logical progression of that old saying that there are a million stories in the naked city. It's just that now, they're that much easier to see.

Rockefeller Center: Playground of Lucifer!

I started reading the Vigilant Citizen blog after I'd stumbled upon its provocative piece on Lady Gaga's apparent infatuation with the occult. Alongside Arthur Goldwag's entertaining "Cults, Conspiracies & Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull & Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order & Many, Many More" (which I just recently finished reading), my fascination for nefarious shenanigans and unexplained phenomena has been significantly ramped up. As such, when I read the Citizen's article speculating on the ominous, Luciferian origins of Rockefeller Center (a sizable plot of Manhattan that I happen to work right in the heart of), I couldn't resist sharing it here.

Am I now convinced that the sleek Art Deco flourishes and noble austerity of Rockefeller Center hide a slew of infernal secrets (let alone that the statue of Atlas is meant to resemble Mussolini)? Well, not quite, but I find this stuff quite intriguing. Click here to read it and judge for yourself.

Stuff You Might Have Missed

I'm not going to lie. It's been slow going here at Flaming Pablum of late (as you may have noticed). I'm grappling with a bit of a bout of the January blahs, I suppose. I have a few items on the proverbial back burner that I need to turn the heat up on, but in the interim, here are a few items that have caught my eye recently that I thought might similarly capture your interest. Enjoy.

Appealing to my tinnitus-prompted longing for silence, I stumbled upon a fascinating piece on Newsweek.com this week about America's vanishing quiet spaces. Sure, it's a bit rife with lots of hippy claptrap about the music of nature, but there are some salient points to be made about how our lives can be helped by listening to the silence.

"Face it, CD's aren't coming back." So say the tight-suspendered bean-counters at SmartMoney in this recent article about 10 things you should stop buying in 2010. This list also includes DVDs, compact digital cameras and external hard drives (i.e. things I like and still use). Screw progress.

In happier news, Paste Magazine (a now-online-only periodical I very fleetingly wrote for) interviewed Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh on the sound and direction of their forthcoming album. In even more truly devolved news, it seems the spud boys are now slated to play at the Winter Olympics. Honestly, I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

In other forthcoming album news, The Quietus had the enviable opportunity of hearing the impending Killing Joke opus, Feast of Fools alongside Jaz Coleman and Youth, and all parties concerned feel that the end results are nothing short of spectacular. I, for one, cannot wait.

Also on the music front, every now and then I still catch wind of a new band that fires my imagination. Yesterday, my young(er) colleague Drew forwarded me a clip by a band called Yeasayer. I know precious fuck-all about them, but their acid-damaged clip for "Ambling Alp" looks like "Logan's Run" as directed by Maya Deren. Oh, and the tune's pretty cool as well. See what ya think.

Sad News

Pour one out.

For what it's worth, here are my thoughts on Salinger's masterpiece from a little over a year ago.

The Voice Speaks

I honestly can't remember the last time I picked up a copy of The Village Voice. Throughout the late 80s and 90s, I practically never missed an issue. I can't remember when it happened exactly, but at some point in the early 00's, I just … stopped. There didn't seem to be much point to it. This morning on my walk to work, however, I spied the cover of the current issue and decided to reach into the big red, plastic box and pull one out. The cover story, "I Blog New York: 18 Obsessive, Cantankerous and Unstoppable Gotham Blogs Worth Going Ape Over," was obviously something I couldn't pass up. Did Flaming Pablum make the cut? You're kidding, right? Of course I didn't, but my estimable comrade Jeremiah Moss did (as well he should have). You can spare yourself a trip outside and read the rest of their (dubious) list here. Bastards.

Lane in Vain III: Beer Brings People Together

As I mentioned before, I don't really have a dog in this race, but I've been following the story somewhat slavishly since its inception and thought I may as well bring the only passively-interested up to speed . Evidently, the warring factions of hipsters and Hasidim in Brooklyn over Williamsburg bike lanes (and the scantily clad babes who cycle in them) recently got together to smoke'em peace pipe at a local bar. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't seem like any meaningful resolution or compromise was struck, but at least they could agree that the Department of Transportation is way lame. Warms the cockles of my heart, it does.

And this post was not just a shallow excuse to exhume the poster from Queen's Jazz album. Honest, it wasn't!

This Is Your Vinyl Warning

Ever since the wife bestowed upon my undeserving ass a brand spankin' new turntable, I'm starting to fall back in love with vinyl. So imagine my piqued curiosity when I read (via Tim B.) about The New York Underground Record Fair, happening this Sunday out in the wilds of Brooklyn. If you're a collector of rare hardcore singles and the like, this might be the event for you. You might even see me there, attempting to pawn off my second copy of the Cop Shoot Cop Piece Man 7" (splattered in genuine pig's blood). Rise above.

Old Spice

I got together with a couple of friends last night at Motor City on Ludlow Street, a bar I probably hadn't been inside for over a decade. The interior remains endearingly seedy although instead of the raucous garage rock one would normally expect to be playing, we happened to stumble into the establishment during roots reggae night. So, in between an irritating, high-volume conversation at a neighboring table about football (including lots of earnest high fives) and some sternum-quaking dub (notably an inexplicable reggae cover of "My Love" by Paul McCartney & Wings), my friends and I huddled around our beers and strained to hear each other speak.

Somewhere during the conversation, my friend John brought up the Spice Girls, although I'm not entirely sure why. I believe he was drawing a parallel to the career trajectory of Lady Gaga, but the details escape me. In any case, this in turn led to a spirited discussion about the plot of the Spice Girls' film, "Spice World" (a cinematic experience John was arguably fortunate enough to endure in a movie theatre). Along the way, I confessed that I'd take the Spice Girls over most of today's pop piffle by a wide margin (with apologies to Lady Gaga). My wife was a big fan of theirs, so I'm no stranger to the Spice oeuvre. I'd probably live a long, fulfilled life if I never had to hear "Wannabe" again, but overall, their stuff didn't make me want to blow up the world in the same fashion that the bleating ditties of, say, Beyonce or Mariah Carey do.

In a weird coincidence, the Spice Girls inserted themselves into the news today with the announcement that a Spice Girls musical ala "Mama Mia" is in the works. At the office, I wondered aloud if the `Girls had enough recognizable hits to flesh out a proper musical. This, of course, prompted my colleague Drew and I to rattle off as many Spice hits as we could. Drew cited "2 Become 1," and that triggered my memory of the video. The song may be a forgettable, soppy ballad, rife with cumbersome allusions to safe sex (put it on… put it on…), but the video is a lovely slow-motion montage of nocturnal Manhattan. Herein, witness the girls flouncing about Times Square, Midtown, Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, 6th Avenue and, of course, the World Trade Center. My favorite locale is in a pre-gentrification shot on the corner of West 14th Street & 9th Avenue (now a chic restaurant, then a desolate backwater). There's also a moment wherein Sporty Spice strides unconvincingly down the middle of Columbus Circle with the since entirely-remodeled "lollipop building" in the background.

But don't take my word for it, see below. Zigg-a-zig-ah!

Astor & Servant

As a slavishly geeky, record-collecting Upper East Side teen in the early 80's, Astor Place was my subway station of choice. I'd just hop on the downtown 6 train at 86th street and cruise down to Astor. As goofy as it sounds, I always felt a twinge of excitement when my train pulled into that station. I loved climbing up those stairs into the wide open sunlight, immersing myself in my own fanciful projections of downtown Manhattan's urban bohemian playground. To the east lay the still funky & credibly punky St. Marks Place. To the west lay the record shops of 8th Street. South lay the Bowery, Soho and beyond.

It's a different city nowadays, of course, but I still love Astor Place. The influx of shitty Kmart, Starbucks and the open-space-eviscerating, big blue shampoo bottle that is "starchitect" Charles Gwathmey's "undulating" tower notwithstanding, it still feels like the epicenter of all that I geographically hold dear (for whatever ridiculous reason). Of course, it's only slated to change even further when they tear down the already-rotting 51 Astor Place in order to build another shiny rubic's cube of a building for Cooper Union, but I addressed all that a while back on this post.

The other day, however, I stumbled upon a site operated by those folks who re-designed the stretches of Broadway that intersect Times Square, Herald Square and Madison Square, replacing once-busy traffic arteries with Euro-styled plazas festooned with lunch tables. NYC Street Renaissance seeks to re-imagine Astor Place in a similar fashion, bumping the oft-spun Cube sculpture up a block to make way for a more pedestrian-friendly esplanade. I'm not sure how I feel about that, honestly. The `Place has gone through so many changes already, but I bristle at the notion of it becoming entirely unrecognizable. Coinciding with all this, I recently unearthed a couple of old photos from the late 90s that were taken in Astor Place. Here I am -- looking much younger & fresher -- posing with two friends from the Firewatercircus (an online cabal of fervent Firewater fans... Colleen the brunette, it should be noted, is an accomplished photographer whose site you should check out). These were taken in about 1998, I'd say. Anyway, they're a brief, fleeting glimpse of what the `Place looked like before Gwathmey erected that eyesore. I wonder what it was all look like in another ten years.

Kiki Bridges Revisited

On a Connecticut-bound Metro North train from Grand Central Station today, I ended up sitting across the aisle from actress Linda Fiorentino (of “The Last Seduction,” “Men in Black,” “Vision Quest” fame). Linda was also in my oft-cited, favorite film of all time, that being Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours.” For several stops, I mulled over the idea of confessing my unhealthy obsession with the movie to her (I've done this sort of thing before and sometimes it backfires). I decided it against it and left her alone, probably for the better.

She still looks great, though.