Flaming Pablum

Summer 2020

"Through The Night"

Brooklyn at night during the peak of New York City's coronavirus outbreak, captured on bike rides throughout the borough. Set to Pat Irwin's haunting recording of the U.S. national anthem performed at the Never Records installation at The Rudin Family Gallery at BAM Strong on January 23, 2020.

Companion photo book Keep This Far Apart: Nighttime in Brooklyn, Spring 2020 available for purchase, with all proceeds going to Brooklyn Rescue Mission: https://sampolcer.com/store/keep-this...

Filmmaker statement: "On April 6th, New York City reached what turned out to be its highest number of daily COVID-19 hospitalizations (1,719) and cases (6,376), and third-highest number of daily deaths (565); the city had firmly established itself as the world’s coronavirus epicenter, gripped by fear, uncertainty and loneliness. That night, I began going on bike rides throughout the borough after dark for exercise and a taste of freedom sorely lacking in locked-down isolation. Out on the streets, I was struck by an overwhelming quiet overlaid with the constant wail of distant ambulance sirens, and decided immediately to document what I saw, from shuttered theaters and garbage-strewn sidewalks to the occasional cyclist or couple out for an evening stroll. For seven weeks, when the city that never sleeps tucked itself in, I’d embark from my home in the Kensington neighborhood with camera and tripod in tow. I felt compelled to document this moment, and to capture the feeling of isolation experienced by millions in close proximity to each other.

Over Memorial Day weekend, the city reclaimed some of its vitality, with more New Yorkers leaving their homes to socialize, and I stopped shooting. The next day, George Floyd was murdered by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin—a second bookend to the project as horrifying as the first.

When it came time to assemble the footage, I remembered a somber rendition of the national anthem performed by the composer and musician Pat Irwin in January as a part of Never Records, a recording studio/record store art installation that took place at the new Rudin Gallery at BAM Strong. (I'm a content strategist at BAM.) I just had this sense that the country was about as low as it could go, spiritually, and in nearly all other ways—thousands of people were dying, and our leaders were asleep at the wheel—and Irwin’s deeply affecting ‘Anthem’ resonated with that sentiment. It's probably the somberest, least patriotic version of the tune you've ever heard. And as an instrumental that leaves out the lyrics, it's appropriate considering current conversations around racial inequality: the song's lyricist, Francis Scott Key, was a slaveowner.

As NYC reopens and much of the country grapples with virus surges, the film is a meditative portrait of the city at its most locked-down. Is this what it means to be patriotic during a pandemic?"

Bios: Sam Polcer is a writer and photographer whose work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Out New York, Hemispheres, Brooklyn Magazine, Spin.com, Esquire.com, Travel+Leisure.com, and many other websites and publications, as well as at the Museum of the City of New York. He is also a content strategist at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). His first book, New York Bike Style, was published by Prestel in 2014. Previously, he was the communications director at Bike New York and an editor (of both text and photography) at Hemispheres. https://www.sampolcer.com

Patrick Irwin is a composer and musician who was a founding member of two bands that grew out of New York City's No Wave scene in the late 1970s, the Raybeats and 8-Eyed Spy. He joined The B-52s from 1989 through 2008. He has composed scores for numerous independent films including My New Gun, But I'm A Cheerleader, and Bam Bam and Celeste as well as hundreds of cartoons including Rocko's Modern Life, Pepper Ann, A Little Curious, and Class of 3000. He composed the scores for HBO's Bored to Death and Showtime's Nurse Jackie and most recently for the Netflix show, The Good Cop. https://www.patirwinmusic.com

The Chocolate of Convenience

My excellent friend and former colleague Jonathan wrote this, and I thought it was pretty insightful, so I'm sharing it here.

How is COVID-19 like a chocolate bar? Well I'm glad you asked, dear friend.

Anyone who has visited the US from overseas (remember when that was a thing?) will tell you that American chocolate tastes terrible. Personally I don't think so and always assumed it was European elitism around the production methods and percent of cacao and so on.

But no.

It turns out that American chocolate doesn't exactly use real milk, in order to make the product shelf stable. So I can grab a Snickers bar out of a desk drawer that's been there for years and have basically no fear that it's gone bad. Melted, maybe. But never rancid or dangerous. That shelf stable milk is the funny taste non-Americans can't get past.

We have grown up eating the chocolate of convenience. Because we are an impatient lot and though we might say, think or feel differently, we value ease over quality.

This year we have been asked to be inconvenienced and patient. We gave it a go, more or less, but quietly decided it wasn't for us. We needed our hair done, or our vices fed. Sure, some people might get sick or even die but that only happens to "other people" like shark attacks or lightning strikes. So the salons and the bars and the restaurants opened back up while exhausted health care workers begged and pleaded with us not to, because our vanity and our self interest proved stronger than our literal instinct to survive.

America, we could have licked this in a few weeks. We could have stayed home and worn masks on our minimal, essential outside activities. But you needed a lobsterita. We could have been eating really good chocolate, outdoors, together, without masks. It just required patience. Now we'll probably be stuck at home eating that old, melty Snickers bar FOREVER while the rest of the world watches.

At this point I only wonder if they laugh or cry.

Today is the Midpoint of 2020

....and hasn't it just been an absolute gas so far? 

Michael Rapaport Weighs In On Masks

If you're at all familiar with Michael Rapaport, you're probably aware that he's not big on mincing words, beating around the bush and/or worrying about subtle nuance. He's a bit blunt.

In this instance, his signature blend of brute-force bluntness is exactly what the doctor ordered, pardon the pun. Listen up.

Whole Lotta Lunch

I think the first time I ever encountered Lydia Lunch was via her contribution to Sonic Youth’s Bad Moon Rising album in 1985, wherein she duetted with Thurston Moore on “Death Valley `69,” a little off-kilter ditty about the Manson Family that, when played, used to make my freshman-year roommate in college leave the room with a look of concerned agitation on his face … always a sign of quality. In fact, fuck it, here it is now….duck & cover….

Incidentally, the angry brunette lady gnashing her teeth throughout that clip is not Lydia Lunch. Lydia make a blink-&-you’ll-miss-her cameo, but the “star” of this clip is one Lung Leg, a fellow alumnus of the cinema of transgression (which I spoke about back here).

In any case, a little while after I latched onto “Death Valley `69," I picked up an issue of Byron Coley’s underground `zine, Forced Exposure, based on its inclusion of articles about Die Kreuzen — who I’d only witnessed play live for the first time some short months earlier — and those old idiotic favorites in The Meatmen. The cover-girl, for want of a better term, of that issue was none other than Lydia Lunch, enabling me to match a comely, slightly intimidating face to the pouty purr on “Death Valley `69.”

Duly intrigued by the fittingly pugnacious interview therein, imagine my glee upon finding out that my college radio station, WDUB 91.1,— where I’d only just started DJ’ing — actually had a long-neglected copy of No New York in a dusty archive otherwise overrun with The Allman Brothers, Little Feat and the soggy flaccidity of Pure Prairie League. For those unfamiliar, No New York was Brian Eno’s seminal No Wave compilation that culled together select bands from that scene, foremost among them being Lydia Lunch’s first band, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks. I vividly remember cueing up “The Closet” from same — on the air, having never heard it before — and letting her rip for WDUB’s audience. The phone summarily lit up at the sound of the discordant guitar, lurching staccato “rhythm” and Lydia’s fraught mewling. I believe we might have fielded some death threats. Pure Prairie League this was not.

I’ve spoken numerous times here about my fandom for Lydia Lunch. Not only do I love all manifestations of her unsettling music, I just find her whole aesthetic — willfully confrontational, whip-smart and unapologetic — so refreshing. It’s no pose. It’s no act. She will fuck you up.

It was for this very reason that, while left to our own devices in quarantine, I decided to, at long last, order Lydia’s cook book.

You read that right.

Indeed, along with being a tireless voice of confrontational provocation and — as she’s put it — irritainment, Ms. Lunch is also an accomplished epicurean.

The thing is, though, I don’t cook. Like, at all. Sure, I can make spaghetti or a burger. I can scramble an egg — although don’t ask me to fry one with any semblance of prowess. I can grill a steak on an outdoor grill, but any moron can do that. When it comes to the nuances of cooking, however, I am a total moron. I took a cooking class in 2001, but didn’t retain any of it. I’m also slavishly spoiled, as I married a resourceful and innovative chef. Peg is roundly capable of turning a haphazard array of leftovers into a strikingly flavorful meal.

Anyway, about three months back, when the realities of the overarching life-hiatus brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic were unfurling, I thought it would be a swell time to get ahold of Lydia’s cook book and give a few of her recipes a try. While my wife had absolutely no idea about Lydia Lunch or her music or deliberately thorny spoken-word stuff — this is probably for the best — she was indeed intrigued by the book and snatched it out of my hands upon arrival, seizing upon Lydia’s recommendations about the myriad nutritional benefits of bee pollen. In case you’ve never sampled same, bee pollen is a frankly pungent amalgam of flower pollen, nectar, enzymes honey, wax and — wait for it — “bee secretions” that tastes exactly like something described with the word “secretions” probably should. When we tried it, suffice to say, it chilled our enthusiasm for venturing further into the gaping maw of Lydia’s pantry, but there are indeed several dishes we’ve earmarked to attempt. Watch this space

Until then, however, if you’re intrigued about Ms. Lunch, you should definitely check out the latest episode of Damian Abraham’s podcast “Turned Out a Punk,” which finds the tirelessly enthusiastic lead singer of Fucked Up chatting with Lydia, who gamely expounds on her musical exploits. Given Lydia’s pronounced disdain for the very word “punk,” it’s no small feat that Damian charmed her into discussing so much stuff here. If you’re a fan, it’s well worth your time.

Also, do stick around for Lydia's rant (taken from her own podcast, which I spoke about a couple of times here not too long back) about the myriad failings of the Trump Administration. Typically, she pulls no punches and takes no prisoners. 

Check it out...

Where We Are

Radioheadcase: The Endurance of Klosterman's Theory

Back in 2005 — fifteen goddamn years ago — I was working an overnight shift at the TIME Magazine News Desk during an extraordinarily quiet evening, and decided to fill the downtime by composing a lark of a post on my still newly minted blog about an amusing-if-ridicuous theory postulated by pop-culture writer Chuck Klosterman. In a very silly nutshell, in an article from SPIN Magazine that was later appended to an anthology of his writings, Klosterman posited the not-entirely-serious notion that Kid A, Radiohead’s much ballyhooed fourth studio album from 2000, predicted the events of September 11, 2001. Should you care, you can read that post here.

That post ended up getting picked up and re-purposed by a couple of outlets, notably Cracked and Noisey, and then became fodder for a few Radiohead fan-sites and message boards. 

Ever since that first post in 2005, no other entry I’ve put up here in the entirety of this blog’s lifespan has garnered as many clicks. It also accrued a wide swathe of comments, attracting both bug-eyed conspiracy theories and abusive spleen-venting from the Radiohead faithful. Just this morning, in fact, said post earned another quip, that being: "LMAOOO WHO LET THIS GUY HAVE INTERNET CONNECTION.”

Ah, mirth. 

As I mentioned in 2016, I long stopped caring about this particular post. Like I said, it was never anything other than an amusing lark. Upon the album’s arrival in 2000, I believe I submitted a lukewarm review of it for a “teen-oriented” website called iStash that never launched (and never paid me), decrying the opus as a departure for nowhere. When I read Klosterman’s piece in SPIN some years later, this ludicrous-but-compelling re-interpretataion of the record gave me a new filter through which to listen, and it certainly did make me enjoy it more, trying to synch up the events in much the same manner in which people claim “The Wizard of Oz” meshes seamlessly with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. I can’t imagine anyone still getting any mileage out of this idiocy, but then, I’m not an avid-enough Radiohead fan nor bona fide conspiracy theorist.

Here in 2020, I gave Kid A another full listen, this morning, during a 6AM walk. While certain tracks do retain a certain vibe for me — still tenuously tethered, in my mind, to Klosterman’s re-purposing — most of the record has lost the eerie mystique  it used to retain. The first several tracks still intrigue, but I found my attention slipping during the latter half of the record. By the start of the final song, “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” I found myself opting out in favor of the band’s sophomore effort, The Bends, which has aged significantly better, to my mind.

In any case, in looking for a kicker for this post, I did some random googling, and up popped the video below, which was first posted on YouTube in 2011. I have no idea if it was inspired by Chuck Klosterman’s writing or my post on same. 

Ill Reconciliation

If you care even slightly about the Beastie Boys, you’ve probably already heard about this, but the Broken Record podcast reunited Adam Horovitz and Michael Diamond with Rick Rubin.

Again, if you care, it’s mandatory listening.

Heavy Mettle

Some of you might remember an entry I posted back in 2016 that took issue with a certain t-shirt that was making the rounds. My point was that #BlackSabbathMatters was a frankly stupid disservice to all parties concerned in that (a) it wasn’t particularly clever (b) it made the mighty Black Sabbath unwittingly complicit and, most importantly, (c) it oafishly made light of a movement dedicated to fighting systemic racism and police brutality. Not a good look, as they say.

It seems that the gents in Black Sabbath concur. News broke, this week, that they’re currently selling their own response, a Black Lives Matter shirt (in the signature font of their Master of Reality sleeve), with ALL proceeds from same going to the movement.

Choke on that one, haters.

If case you’re unfamiliar, THIS is Black Sabbath.