Flaming Pablum

Time Out

Hey all, I need to make like Dave Brubeck and "Take Five." Or should I say have a Time Out? Either way, in the wake of events mentioned yesterday, I need to step away for a little bit. 

Be back soon. 

Catching Up with Squeaky

At some point in the now astonishingly distant early `90s, I was frequently to be found hanging out with a particular cabal of similarly inclined cats from the East Village, most prominently among them a guy named Dean Rispler. Ostensibly, Dean Rispler was the erstwhile boyfriend of my friend Joanne, who I’d met a few years earlier through my writer/musician/roadie friend Steve. But Dean and Joanne had broken up, and Joanne was seeing my friend Rob D. Testament to his big-hearted and congenial nature, Dean wasn’t phased by that, and was still a member of this particular social circle, one that frequently involved drinking a lot and going to see a host of live music all around the Lower East Side. Dean was also shuffling through and working with a number of bands, at the time, including luminaries like The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black (for whom Dean payed bass), Murphy’s Law (ditto), a combo called The Brought-Low and later The Dictators. Beyond all that, he was also a sought-after producer. So, yeah, he was a versatile guy.

At some point, Dean decided to form another band that I’ve discussed here a number of times called The Hot Corn Girls (probably last invoked here). Named after turn-of-the-century Irish prostitutes who sold snackable ears of corn by day and murdered their johns by night, The HCG featured Dean on drums, my friend Joanne on bass and sometimes vocals, a hilarious guy named Bob on vocals and guitar and then a second guitar player named, somewhat enigmatically, Squeaky. They recorded an album called Look at My Bum, and an additional 7”, both released on the evocatively named Stingy Banana records and festooned with suitably pervy cover art by noted photographer Richard Kern (who I also wrote about here, not too long back).

The Hot Corn Girls were absolutely hilarious, and I remember seeing them play at, I believe, The Pyramid and then again at Under Acme. Along the way, I got to know this guy Squeaky better. A somewhat eccentric character with an encyclopedic knowledge of arcane cult cinema, Japanese pop culture and super-obscure punk rock, Squeaky also played in a dizzying host of bands, most notable among them being The Chimpanzees. They’re almost worth a post in themselves.

In any case, while Squeaky was inarguably somewhat left-of-center, he was always entertaining company. I remember asking Dean why people called him Squeaky. Apparently, it was a nickname someone had coined for him as he suffered from Tourette’s Syndrome, and was allegedly prone to periodically making high-pitched, squeaking sounds (although, to this day, I’ve never heard him do so). I immediately felt that was rather pointedly insensitive, but Squeaky never seemed to be bothered by it.

Time passed. The Hot Corn Girls broke up. Joanne and Rob D got married and moved away, only to later divorce. Steve became a roadie for SWANS, then a guitar player for Motherhood Bug, joined Cop Shoot Cop for two albums and then moved to Texas to become a lawyer. Dean kept on producing and recording and playing in more bands than you can possibly keep up with. In no time at all, that little circle of East Village friends fell out of touch.

I kept up with Dean on social media and, through that, also befriended Squeaky there (real name, Dave Wilentz). Since those days, Dave delved further into his passion for unconventional film, making a completely respectable career out of it, while also still being his lovably eccentric, super-knowledgable self. Imagine my surprise, then, that the Killed By Desk podcast, who I’ve spoken rapturously about here and here, set their sights on Dave for one of their in-depth interview/profiles. True to form, both of the hosts have similarly convoluted backstories involving Dave “Squeaky” Wilentz, which — evidently — just goes with the Squeaky territory. 

In any case, it's entirely illuminating and equally hilarious. 

Check out here and tell’em Flaming Pablum sent ya.

Colonoscopocalypse Now!

For whatever reason, I have always been a procrastinator. I’m not proud of it, but I am aware of it. I am routinely more than happy to put off `til tomorrow that which would be more prudent to tackle today. This dates back to my grade-school years and is arguably rooted in any number of intricate emotional quandaries, if the studies are to be believed. While I’d usually get around to completing assignments and studying for looming exams prior to the proverbial 11th hour, too often I was wasting precious time that could have been more constructively spent.

In ensuing years, my penchant for procrastination has been largely kept in check by my bug-eyed preoccupation with staying gainfully employed. Lose your job a few times, like I have, and you’ll get there, too, although that means an excessive amount of worrying that usually outweighs the likelihood of the unceremonious dismissal I’m dreading. So, while I’m invariably “over-concerned” about impending deadlines and their ensuing demands, I’m less likely to procrastinate in terms of executing the particulars.

This is not at all the case, however, in terms of looking after my health. My approach to that, up until recently, has been a fairly irresponsible one that only involves regular check ups, check-ins and office visits when absolutely necessary. Don’t fix what ain’t broke, amiright?

Yeah, well, that’s not right.

They say that once you cross the Rubicon of your 50th year, you need to have a few things checked out. Probably the most notorious of those things involves having a colonoscopy. For the uninitiated, that’s an endoscopic examination of the labyrinthian interiors of your butt with a fiber-optic tube. No, that's not a shot of it above. That's a still from 1979's "The Black Hole." I couldn't resist. In terms of colonoscopies, don’t do a Google image search for those, …you will not enjoy what you find.

Ultimately, it’s not really a big deal. The procedure itself, I gather, takes only minutes, and better they should find something when it’s actionable than when it’s too late, right? 

I’m now 53. I should have had this particular task taken care of three years ago (although more recently they’re saying you should do it at 45). But I didn’t. I chalked it up to being too busy at work (true, but still) or never finding the right time to do it, which is also kinda bullshit. The real reasons are more about trepidation and procrastination.

The prep for the procedure — inarguably the worst part — involves chugalugging two bottles of weapons-grade laxatives over the course of the day before. This means you’re going to want to stay home and stay close to the porcelain, so to speak, for what I can only imagine is a robust afternoon of … well, you know.

In all honesty, I did have every intention of getting this done last year, but then, of course, the pandemic arrived and took a big dump — pardon the strenuously unfortunate pun — over all of those plans.

Once the smoke started to clear on COVID-19 (although I wouldn’t quite count on it being done and dusted just yet), I went back to my primary-care doc and bit the bullet, making an appointment for a colonoscopy at long last.

The timing needed to be strategic. Last weekend, we drove my son Oliver up to Vermont to go back to the camp he had to miss last year. You might remember a series of drama-drenched posts about his first visit to the place. On Sunday, we put my daughter Charlotte on a bus to her grandmother’s out to the East End of Long Island. With both teens now out of the house, I can focus on the health-positive-albeit-insalubrious mission ahead.

Today is prep day. I had a light breakfast and one cup of coffee. Come 1pm, I am relegated to only “clear liquids.” At 4pm, I crack open the first bottle of the stuff. I’ll spare you the details of what I expect will transpire after that.

The procedure itself is tomorrow morning at 9am. Maybe not a “full report,” but expect any pertinent news later that day.

Farewell, Fran Powers

I was shocked and saddened to hear yesterday through a mutual friend about the passing of Fran Powers. I hadn’t corresponded with him in quite a while, but knew he was not in good health for some time. I was sorry to learn that he finally succumbed to his illness.

While we had a few mutual friends, I didn’t know Fran exceptionally well, but only really got to know him through this stupid blog. I’d been aware of him and his status as a member of New York punk scene in bands like Modern Clix, Whole Wide World and Ultraviolence (below), but didn’t get to know him until accosting him at a party thrown by Yukie Ohta of the SoHo Memory Project. Shortly after that, I conducted an interview with Fran about his days on the hardcore scene and his fleeting-but-memorable cameo in Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours.” You can read all that here.

From that point on, we became friends, and Fran was frequently further invoked here on the blog, as recently as this past April.

Farewell, Fran. I will miss you and always wish we’d had more time to hang out.

The excellent photo of Fran above was taken by Brooke Smith.

Pour one out & crank it up…

Back to GG's Last Day ... 28 Years Later

I never went to see GG Allin. My friend Rob B. and I came dangerously close to going when he played the Space at Chase on Third Avenue, but demurred at the last minute. Had we actually gone, we stood the chance of being preserved for posterity on celluloid, as said performance was famously captured in Todd Philips’ documentary, “Hated.” Also, had we gone, we stood the chance of being physically assaulted by the star attraction and/or pelted with fistfuls of GG’s own freshly produced excrement, so you can possibly see why we didn’t go.

I don’t know if he went to the Space at Chase show, but my friend Aaron did go see GG (….and the Murder Junkies …mustn’t forget them) when they played what would be GG’s final-ever show at the fabled Gas Station on Avenue B. I’ve invoked that show several times here before (most recently here, I suppose). Video of the event appears on YouTube with regularity, only to be shortly pulled down for any number of reasons, usually involving nudity, violence and overall depravity.

As recently as this past November, however, someone re-uploaded the footage, and it’s probably the cleanest and sharpest version of proceedings I’ve seen, … not that anyone really needs to see GG Allin in high-definition, mind you.

Once again, the live experience fleetingly provided by GG Allin & The Murder Junkies is assuredly not for everyone, but this footage remains time-capsule-worthy as a telling glimpse of the East Village circa 1993, when the order of the day was significantly less genteel and brunch-centric than it is today.

Today, of course, the Gas Station is long, long gone, its footprint now occupied by an antiseptic Duane Reade. Later on in the day captured here on video, GG Allin would die rather unceremoniously of a heroin overdose.

ADDENDUM: A testament to the clarity of this particular iteration of the video, I'm only now noticing that one of the sycophants hanging around GG in the wake of the abortive performance is none other than the mysterious Squid, who I recently discussed here. 

This all happened 28 years ago today.

You’ve been warned. Enjoy.

A Special Event

Tune into “Saturday Night Live,” these days, and the musical guests will doubtlessly not be pushing any envelopes in any meaningful capacity. At some distant point, the booking policy started adhering rather strictly to already-established, mainstream artists who were promoting brand new albums. Ultimately, it became less about introducing audiences to new and different music and solely about shifting units and selling product.

Suffice to say, `twas not always thus.

Turn back the clock to the show’s earlier incarnations, and you find an entirely different scenario. SNL gave a stage to bands who’d otherwise never have gotten that kind of broad exposure, from Devo, Sun Ra and Gary Numan to Frank Zappa, Laurie Anderson and well-pre-Let’s Dance-era Bowie (when he was still pretty damn freaky). And, of course, let’s not forget FEAR.

Below is another perfect example. Clips from this episode have been on and off YouTube for years, but someone recently uploaded both numbers from that evening, and they are a revelation.

Dating back to April of 1980, here are the mighty Specials in their kinetic prime. Introduced by veteran character actor Strother Martin (his last television appearance prior to his death), the Specials launch into “Gangsters” and “Too Much Too Young” with their signature, nattily-dressed aplomb (note that they change outfits between songs). Even within the cramped studio, the band loses none of their high-stepping frenzy. Simply put, NOBODY moved like The Specials.

Enjoy it while it lasts. This is how it’s done, kids.

 

Some Perspective

I wanted to weigh back in the wake of both my last post and on the larger story as a whole, which continues to snowball from being a local concern to now one garnering sensationalist headlines in UK periodicals like The Independent and The Daily Mail. There is indeed a lot of stuff going on in Washington Square Park, of late, but I think it’s prudent to point a few things out.

Firstly, the park in question has gone through myriad iterations over the decades, to say nothing of its fairly grim past as an execution ground and a potter’s field in previous centuries. As recently as the late 60s/early 70s, the park was a fairly grotty hub of desperation, as depicted in the documentary film embedded in this comparatively ancient post, wherein I alluded to 2016’s version as being “comparatively idyllic.” Defenders of today’s version, meanwhile, will be quick to point out the druggy, dirty and edgy version of the park that held sway in the `70s and into the `80s. There is indeed truth to that. In my own experience, I certainly remember regularly walking through Washington Square Park in the `80s, invariably on my way to any number of since-vanished Greenwich Village record shops. The park, by that point, was certainly awash in drug sales, but predominantly just weed (or, more accurately, oregano posing unconvincingly as weed). Even at this point, though, I never felt a sense of menace in the park, although I was also young and naïve. To my mind, the experience of Washington Square Park in the `80s is perfectly captured in the video of “Que Pasa/Me No Pop I” by Coati Mundi.

Of course, by the Giuliani era, the drug trade was pushed out (largely to points east) and actual video cameras were famously installed, some allegedly hidden in treetop birdhouses, if the myths are true.

I don’t remember seeing a striking difference in the park, though, until the mid-2000’s, when they started carving up the space in an arguable upgrade (the crux of the plan being to move the fountain so that it was flush with Fifth Avenue). By this point, I was regularly visiting the park with my kids, them having both spent sizable amounts of time in the park’s playgrounds. As I mentioned here, I don’t believe I was entirely onboard with the renovation.

When Washington Square Park fully re-opened in 2009, it was indeed lovely, and myself and my family resumed our regular visits.

From that point on, I think we all just took the park for granted. There were always going to be elements of it that didn’t entirely play nice with others, but such is the nature of public space. To think it was going to remain squeaky clean, especially given its long history, is kind of ridiculous. Just as there will always be old hippies hoarsely crooning out-of-tune John Lennon tunes there, there were always going to be some shady goings-on if you looked hard enough for them.

The pandemic, however, gave another spin to proceedings, revitalizing Washington Square Park’s former status as a hotbed of a public activism, demonstration and protest and becoming a favored spot for rallies of various causes, most notable among them being Black Lives Matter. Anyone who was shocked or upset by that probably isn’t very versed in the city’s history.

But this spring brought something different. The shady goings-on alluded to two graphs up were no longer especially well-hidden. The drug trade came back with a vengeance, and – as mentioned – we’re not just talking about pot. Crack and heroin took up residence in the northwesterly quadrant of the square (uncomfortably close to the smaller children’s playground). Both the collective trauma of the pandemic and the seeming relaxation of both basic amenities and law-enforcement within the confines of the park sort of morphed the square into a permissive oasis for some and a scary headache for others. Then the late-night raves started.

As far as I’m concerned, I don’t really give that much of a damn what people are up to in the park. But I do take strenuous objection to the hard drugs, the crime, the violence, the proliferation of garbage and the abject lack of basic consideration. As I said in the last post, by all means utilize your public spaces to their fullest potential, but show some fucking courtesy, restraint and respect while you do it. I posted something to that same effect on social media, and swiftly came the “Hey you kids, get off my lawn” rejoinder. More like, “Hey you kids, stop giving hand jobs to crackheads in full view of the playground, shitting in the fountain and assaulting people.”

In terms of the late-night parties, I don’t live close enough to actually hear what’s going on, but I see what the place looks like in the mornings, and I’m just not down with the ensuing melees that have been the result. The bozo behind all that is this idiotic asshole, who is as egomaniacal as he is myopically stupid, … which is saying something.

In any case, this all said, while the park has indeed seen better days (however you’d care to define that), this is not to say that you cannot still sit down and enjoy its green, open pleasantness. I passed through it this past weekend and took the picture below – not the roiling sphincter of acrimony and bloodshed the headlines would otherwise have you believe.

But we can still all do better.

What's Going On In Washington Square

Whether you’re going to Washington Square Park to be your authentic self, let your freak flag fly, commune with the similarly inclined, enjoy the nice weather or because you’re simply trying to walk through it to get to the other side, can’t we all agree that – as it’s a public space – it should be an experience that DOES NOT involve brazen drug abuse (we're not just talkin' weed), prostitution, the threat of violence and late-night, high-volume bacchanalia in a residential neighborhood?

It’s also a complete, goddamn bomb-site every morning with trash all over the place. I’ve lived in NYC my entire life, and even compared to the freewheelin’ 80s, it’s never been as off the rails as it is now. By all means, use your public space, but at least attempt to demonstrate some courtesy, restraint and respect while you do it.

Man on The Street

I was interviewed by PIX 11 News in a bona fide "man on the street" segment today. Watch me start babbling like a googly-eyed sock puppet at about 00:57. In my opinion, I had more insightful things to say than the particular portion of our exchange that they saw fit to use, but y'know ... whatever.

What's In The Box?

So, just to close the circle on this, here is the rest of the story….

In the wake of learning that a UPS package with my name on it had mysteriously shown up at my former address 19 years after I’d moved out, I was understandably intrigued. New occupant Carl mentioned that he’d shoot me an email after he’d left it downstairs for me to pick up. All day, however, from the banal to the bizarre, I was bewildered by what the explanation could be.

My first guess was that it was the next phase of an eBay scam I’d somehow gotten ensnared in. A month or so back, I started receiving strange, small UPS packages that were obviously not actually meant for me. Containing these plastic shoelace-protector things for sneakers, at least nine or ten of these parcels showed up with my name and current address on them, all from different eBay buyers, and all seemingly intended as “goods returned to sender.” I believe it’s technically called a “brushing” scheme, and it’s sort of disturbing. After a while, though, they stopped arriving. I still have them all in a box in my front closet, uncertain what to do with them. But upon first hearing about the mystery package on East 12th Street, I became concerned that the problem might be spreading to my old address. So, yeah, that was my first thought.

Sticking with the eBay theme, though, I also harbored the notion that the package may be some long-errant item I’d won on the auction platform that had been languishing in limbo this whole time, finally reaching its appointed destination. Maybe it was a vintage Stranglers poster or a rare Bad Brains 7”. This, by far, was the option I was hoping for the most.

Thinking even further afield, however, my next concept was that it was something more personal, potentially from someone I’d have fallen out of regular contact with prior to moving in 2002. My mind entertained wild notions of it being a box full of personal effects from a far-flung, estranged relative or a bag of ancient mixtapes from a disgruntled ex-girlfriend or a neatly-packed and meticulously counted bundle of 100-dollar bills in tight plastic bands or, y’know, a severed head. The possibilities on this thread were maddeningly endless.

Carl emailed me again early Monday afternoon to say that the package was with the doorman. I left my office downtown around 5:30pm and went to go solve the mystery.

With my brain now spinning the scenario into a fanciful hybrid of “Paddle to the Sea” and the denouement of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (wherein robotic interstellar probe, Voyager Six, returns from the hollow vacuum of a black hole in deep space to reconvene with its creator), I walked into my old lobby to retrieve my fateful package. I didn’t recognize the doorman on duty, but having not lived there for almost two decades, that was not entirely surprising. “Hi, I’m Alex,” I said, "I’m picking up a package that was left for me by Carl on the third floor?” I pictured the doorman reaching under his desk to reveal a weathered, battle-faded parcel, pockmarked by age and festooned with stickers from various ports of call like the pages of a secret agent's passport. I imagined it being covered in dust with barely-discernible handwriting scrawled across it.

Instead, he handed me a thin, flat UPS mailer that very assuredly did not date back to 2002. Sure enough, my name and former address were on it, with the return address being simply the “mail room” of some fulfillment center in West Virginia. I thanked the doorman and took off.

Reeling from a combination of incredulity, confusion and, frankly, disappointment, I opened the cardboard envelope when I got back out onto East 12th Street to reveal its contents ….

…concert tickets for DEVO’s September show at Radio City Music Hall.

As expected, the explanation is somewhat strenuously anticlimactic. On June 11th, tickets went on sale for this show at the very same venue I first saw DEVO in 1981. I immediately purchased a pair of tickets via the site featured on Facebook — that being Ticketmaster. Evidently, I have not used my Ticketmaster account since 2002, when I lived on East 12th Street, so upon completion of the transaction, Ticketmaster sent my tickets to the only address it has for me. No scams. No rare Bad Brains single. No clandestine box of cryptic ephemera. No wads of cash. No severed head.

I came home and put the UPS mailer with my tickets in it on my bureau and told my wife the ridiculous news.

Later that night, she accidentally threw that UPS mailer out.

My son Oliver intrepidly fished the mailer out of the bowels of the trash in the basement this morning, averting further hysteria.

Move along. Nothing further to see here.