Flaming Pablum

Word on the Street

Presidents Day

How's It Going for You?

Not sure you’ve noticed (or care), but I’ve been making a concerted effort to carry on here without as many invocations of larger scale current affairs and world events, but I can only hold my tongue on these subjects for so long, so feel free to skip this post, if that sort of thing burns your toast. I’ll get right back to the trivial nonsense in short order.

A couple of years back, I eased up on my comment-vetting with an eye for re-enabling more of a dialogue with anyone bothering to read this stuff. However, in short order, a very dependable troll seized on the opportunity to lob a few characteristically objectionable remarks of the not-even-slightly constructive or enlightened variety into the Comments box and that was, once again, that. The last I checked, the source of that tireless firehose of hateful sewage is still dutifully spraying, but those colorful contributions are now funneled directly into a blocked list that remains unread and routinely block-deleted. I suppose I admire their tenacity, though.

So, while I’m not throwing those doors back open, I am curious to read some actual, sincere feedback. I’m pretty sure there is at least handful of readers here from the other side of the fence (I’m looking at you, Was Proxy) who can conduct a reasonable exchange on the subjects without it degrading into a pointless volley of nasty name-calling.

So, here’s my question, and not just for the folks on the Right, but to my fellow Lefties and anyone caught in the middle. How are YOU feeling about everything that’s been going on, in the past few weeks?

How are you feeling about the recent confirmations of inarguably ill-qualified figures like RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth, and the worryingly likely confirmation of demonstrable idiot Kash Patel? How’re are you feeling about the appointment of Russell Vought, the pen behind most of the initial executive orders and one of the masterminds behind Project 2025?

How are you reconciling the promises Trump’s already failed to deliver on, like the much-ballyhooed price of eggs?

How are you feeling about Elon Musk’s priapic rise – with seemingly unchecked, unfettered access – in the dismantling of the federal government?

I mean, there’s the inarguably stupid garbage, too, like the re-naming of the Gulf of Mexico, the bullshit about plastic straws, the design to acquire Greenland (let alone that Georgia congressman’s proposal to name it “Red, White and Blueland”), and the ongoing allusion to Canada becoming the 51st State. How’s that embarassing crap sitting with ya?

Some would toss Trump’s frequent comments about the U.S. commandeering Gaza and “owning” it, permanently displacing 2,000,000 Palestinians in the process, to build some doubtlessly tacky resort into the “stupid garbage” pile, too. Sure, this sounds – and, mind you, IS -- fucking ridiculous (and ought to be solid grounds for invoking Section 4 of the 25th Amendment), but even if it is just “outrage porn,” as the Lincoln Project describes it, designed to distract the citizenry from more nefarious doings that are moving forward, the blithe suggestion of the U.S. occupying any real estate (and, let’s face it, that’s how Trump really views the scenario) in Gaza will potentially come with a very unpleasant price. While Gaza is not technically part of the Arab Peninsula, it’s well close enough, and let’s remember that America’s presence in that region following the Saudis’ entreaty for support following Sadam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait is precisely what prompted Al-Qaeda to start making plans to fly planes into our buildings. Just saying.

How’s this all working out for you? Let me know.

The illustration up top is by the inimitable Gerald Scarfe, whose signature work you might remember from Pink Floyd The Wall. 

Get Well Soon, David

If I’m being honest, the first time I ever heard David Johansen sing was not via his storied tenure in the New York Dolls, but rather during the early portions of his post-Dolls solo career, just prior to his comparatively lucrative reinvention as Buster Poindexter.

He’d scored a minor hit with “Funky but Chic” in 1978, which abandoned his previous incarnation as a lippy, cross-dressing frontman in favor of a more streamlined, mainstream approach. But his music didn’t cross my transom until the early days of MTV, wherein David was promoting a live album called Live It Up, featuring a not-really-punky at all cover medley of songs by Eric Burdon and the Animals. In between era-defining clips by bands like The Fixx, Golden Earring and Thompson Twins would come this ersatz live clip (Dave is clearly lip-syncing) of the great man in front of a very receptive audience, flanked by a band of gurning guys with mullets and sleeveless t-shirts. Here’s that clip now. It’s aged better than I’d remembered it.

I don’t think I bought a proper New York Dolls release until my junior year of high school. I remember picking up the ROIR cassette of Lipstick Killers at the Disc-O-Mat on East 58th Street, but by that point, the band’s proto-punk blend of bawdy glam-damaged rawk had been so brazenly appropriated by dozens of pretenders to the throne that it was hard to reconcile how original they must have sounded at the dawn of the impenetrably beige 1970s.

In any case, Johansen’s gone on to lead a fairly remarkable career of comebacks, detours, reinventions and surprises ever since, and remains something of a national treasure. Sadly, the latest surprise was his admission, today, that he’s currently battling Stage 4 Cancer and a brain tumor. Click here for more details and to help, if you can.

Godspeed, David. This will always be my favorite New York Dolls track....

"Don't Believe Him"

"...We're All Going to Go"

Never knew there was a proper “video” for this (although I’m sure no one called it that in 1970), but here’s the great Curtis Mayfield’s artful clip for “(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go,” filmed around the gritty New York City of the era.

Fifty-five years after this song’s release, the conditions Curtis was lamenting still hold sway, making it rather depressingly timely.

Word on The Street

 

 

Here in the New Age

For those few of you who’ve even noticed, I apologize for the sporadic nature of my posting, these days.

At one point, I say I’m stepping away, only to post something a couple of days later. I feel compelled to keep sharing stuff, but given the tenor of the times, the topics I normally write about here seem impossibly trivial (more so than usual). By the same token, I don’t really think anyone gets a tremendous kick out of the political stuff I might be prompted to vent about. Suffice to say, every morning, I scan the headlines, and am fucking astonished that this is the world we’re now living in. But here we are.

As such, it really doesn’t feel like the right time for me to be waxing rhapsodic about lost record stores, vanished pubs, mysterious NYC photographs from a previous era or how unjustly overlooked an album Oil and Gold by Shriekback is. My heart’s just not in it, right now.

How’re YOU feeling?

Poached Pics: Pieces of the Past

There’s been a bit of an exodus, in recent days, of folks leaving Instagram and Facebook, put off by Zuckerberg’s brazen sucking-up to Trump. I, too, have courted the idea of leaving — which is saying something, given the ridiculous amount of crap I post on both platforms. I even opened a BlueSky account (find it here, should you care), but ultimately find it a bit too similar to the original Twitter (before Elon Musk took a giant, Hitler-heiling shit all over it). I never really warmed to Twitter, but we’ll see how it goes.

Personally, the notion of leaving those two Meta platforms is difficult in that it invariably means falling out of touch with a veritable nation of folks who I pretty much only know online. That’s tough to step away from, but again, we’ll see how it shakes out.

In any case, in perusing my Instagram page, trying to decide what my next step was to be, I happened to click on the roster of images I’d tagged in my “saved” column, like the excellent shot above of the intersection of Lafayette and Bleecker Street, which was taken in 1990 by my friend Gregoire Alessandrini. In doing so, I was reacquainted with several images that spoke to posts I’ve logged here, over the years. I thought I’d take a moment to share some of those, so here goes.

Below is a photograph of the old interior of Downtown Beirut circa 1989. This photo was originally snapped by a photographer named Eff Norkinhardie, but I prized if off the Instagram feed of Lara B. Sharp. This photo struck me not because it captured what the bar was like on a busy weekend night, but I'd swear to God the tall fella chatting up the lady in the foreground in the cheetah-spotted coat  is my friend Brent Butterworth, although he can neither confirm nor deny that. I wrote about Downtown Beirut here. 

I couldn't say what periodical the page of club ads below came from, but this image is courtesy of the Instagram feed of DaveW61. Long lost ventures being touted here are places I've scribbled about her before, like The Ritz, The Peppermint Lounge, Privates and more. 

The below image came from the Instagram feed of the great Legs McNeil, although I believe he originally got it from the amazing Instagram feed, Blondieisaband. In any case, back in 2014, I put up a bunch of posts speculating on the location of the photos in question, aided and abetted by photographer Roberta Bayley, I managed to track it down. I wrote about Legs McNeil back here. 

The shot of Third Avenue & St. Marks Place comes from the feed of UrbanArchiveNY. I did a series of posts postulating about the dinosaur signage of the old Continental Divide, on this now-unrecognizable strip. Find the culmination here. 

Not a super notable one, but here's the exterior of the Greenwich Village iteration of Crazy Eddie's as found in the feed of MikeSaes. Personally speaking, I was more partial to the uptown iterations of Crazy Eddie's, most specifically the ones on East 57th Street and on East 86th Street. You can read about both of those here. Today, this space below is a Chipotle. 

The below is an amazing artifact prized from the feed of Richard Boch's Muddclub_Book, proving that the Modern Lovers played live in Lower Manhattan in 1975 (and "blew the doors" off the Kitchen). I wrote about The Kitchen here, and the Modern Lovers a few times, most recently here. 

This is the fabled jukebox of the late, lamented Lakeside Lounge on Avenue B. I wrote about this place quite a few times, but most floridly here. This was from the feed of my friend Joe Bonomo. 

Another one from Gregoire's NewYork1990s, here's a shot of the window of Norman's Sound + Vision, which I wrote about here. 

This is an amazing shot from the feed of James and Karla Murray of the exterior of the P&G bar on the Upper West Side. I wrote about it a few times, but most notably as the location of a certain photograph of Joe Jackson. James and Karla, meanwhile, released a great book about NYC bars earlier this year.

Okay, stay with me, now, because this one is a bit confusing. From the feed of Recordrun, this is shot from the mid-`80s of the interior of Record Runner on Cornelia Street. Some short years later, Record Runner would move a block to the west to Jones Street (where it remains today), and this space would turn into Subterranean Records. I've written about both concerns many times here (too many to link, but Google it, if you care). This space as Subterranean Records closed in about 2008 and has been dormant ever since.

A tantalizing collection of flyers from the Rock Hotel, which I spoke about here. This shot was poached shamelessly from the feed of AlexisTMorrow

Taken from the feed of RecycledSounds_Omaha, here's an ad for my beloved Rocks in Your Head on Prince Street in SoHo. I've written about it thousands of times, so Google it if you're curious. 

The below is a shot of the rear exterior facade of the Roseland Ballroom from the feed of retronyc. It was never my favorite venue, but I do miss it, and wrote about it here and here. 

 

Really Worth Sharing

From the National Prayer Service on Tuesday, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde's words to Trump, literally speaking truth to power. This is some Punk Rock, right here.

“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They…may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. Good of all people in this nation and the world. Amen”

-Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde

 

ADDENDUM:This is just too, too good: 

Response from a young Episcopalian named Hayden Vaughn in a group called Episcopalians on Facebook after Trump demanded they apologize to him. The perfect response.
 

President Trump,
1. Much like those who do not want you to be president, you do not get to decide whether a bishop’s office is legitimate. She was chosen by the people of her diocese to be their bishop. Then, she was granted consent to be a bishop by other bishops and standing committees of our church’s dioceses. Beginning by calling her a “so-called” bishop is an obvious low blow to discredit her as a person, rather than what she actually said that you disagree with. The Episcopal Church was legitimate enough to hold your third wedding, the funeral of Melania’s mother, and the baptism of your son, Barron. Barron also attended an Episcopal day school. Now you have an issue with how we do things when it doesn’t go your way?

2. You didn’t have an issue with politics being brought into the church by the ministers who spoke at your inauguration, or by yourself for that matter. They were blatantly partisan, crediting God for your political success: “Mr. President, the last four years there were times I'm sure you thought it was pretty dark, but look what God has done," Graham said.

3. She wasn’t nasty in tone, plain and simple. I can’t remember ever hearing a homily given in such a gracious manner and calm tone. If you disagree, listen to her speak. You may disagree with what she said, but her tone was in no way “nasty.” Additionally, insulting her intelligence, rather than quoting what you disagreed with, is a very typical play coming from a narcissist.

4. The vast majority of people who have committed crimes in the U.S. are U.S. citizens. Defending yourself about being asked to have mercy on immigrants by saying a “large number of illegal migrants came into our country and killed people” is a gross misrepresentation and does not make sense. By that logic, we should be locking up or deporting all Americans because the majority of crimes were committed by citizens. We do need to improve our immigration system, but scripture commands us as Christians to have mercy. Mercy is a central tenet of our faith. Matthew 5:7 says “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Leviticus 19: 33-34 says, “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” If you take issue with this, take it up with God.

5. Saying the service was boring and uninspiring is a move to discredit the event, rather than what specifically was said. However, it’s worth mentioning that the purpose of a service is not to be “exciting”. There are several purposes for our services, such as honoring God, bringing us closer to God, and being in community with one another. Being “exciting” is not one of them. As far as inspiration goes, that is in the eye of the beholder. You get as much out of it as you put into it.

6. The bishop does not owe you an apology. Our church does not owe you an apology. All you were asked to do is what scripture directly asks us to do. If you could quote one thing she asked of you that isn’t asked of us in scripture, we would apologize. Someone recently reminded me of something I often heard growing up in church. If you are offended by a minister’s sermon or feel that it was a personal attack, look to see if you can find anything they said that was out of line with scripture and the teachings of Jesus. If you can’t, that feeling is what we call, “being convicted of your sin”. The fact you are so offended by what was said shows you know there is truth in it. To your supporters who also feel offended by it, the same goes.