Flaming Pablum

Fuck You, Dry January

I mean, let’s face it, January sucks, no matter how you slice it. Between it being long, dark and cold and the comedown from the ostensibly festive holiday season, one can’t help but enter into it with some semblance of dread and despair. This, of course, comes coupled for many with a sense of guilt and obligation, whether it’s because of the resolve to honor one’s New Year’s resolutions or simply to detoxify via the self-imposed exile from boozeville that is so-called “Dry January.”

In past years, I’ve endeavored to accomplish the DryJan challenge, as routinely mentioned on my year-end surveys and at great length here last year. Last time around, as I said, I was knocked off the horse early by the arrival of the colorfully named winter weather event, the Bomb Cyclone. That’s just an excuse, of course. Had it not been the Bomb Cyclone, I’m sure I would have concocted some other reason. In short order, it was beery business as usual.

This year, however, it felt less like a whim or nagging twinge of guilt and more like a necessity. December had proven to be a robust month of imbibing, what with a preponderance of holiday events to attend. After weeks of office Christmas parties, a wedding and a few other booze-laden social engagements, we repaired to my brother-in-law’s place out in Pennsylvania for Boxing Day. I was pretty much handed an open beer when I stepped out the car at 2:00 pm, and that kept going until well into the evening. By New Year’s Eve, I was beyond determined to undertake a Dry January. Hell, I was positively looking forward to it.

I wasn’t getting sloppy-shitty, blacking out, slurring my words, starting fights with strangers or anything, but the burly intake of beer was becoming routine, and my tolerance was ascending sharply. Between the probable weight-gain, the conceivable strain on my liver (although my friend Keith keeps reminding me: THAT’S WHAT YOUR LIVER IS FOR, DAMMIT!) and, frankly, the expenditure -– I felt it was high time to flex my long-dormant will power, dry my system out and save some money… the latter reason reinforced by the arrival of some beefy post-Christmas Amex bills.

For no readily apparent reason, however I decided to augment the swearing-off of beer with two other stipulations. I would go without my iPod (yep, I still use an iPod … and you can go fuck yourself if you find that funny), as I’d been noticing a shrill uptick in the tinnitus that has been screaming in my right ear since 1999. Being that it’s been suggested that alcohol-consumption heightens the ring (along with salt, sugar and pretty much anything else that makes life worth living … like, say, oxygen and sex), I figured I should give my ears a break as well as my liver. A steadily stentorian diet of IDLES, Daughters and, strangely, The Upper Crust for much of December certainly weren’t doing them favors.

The third prong of my resolution was fairly simple: Take the stairs. Not at the office, mind you, but at home. It’s not a big deal, but I figured walking up and down the five flights would be a good habit to get into. To be honest, my building is fairly squat, and you’re on the second floor before it even hits you and while you’ve digested that information, you’re practically on the fourth floor. But hey, … couldn’t hurt, right? Regular readers might remember my running campaign from a few years back. Recurring knee problems forced me to abandon that, but I figure walking up and down stairs is something I should be able to regularly tackle.

Anyway, that was going to be my January – thirty-one days marked by sobriety, silence and strength.

Honestly, the toughest of the three directives to honor has been the stairs. It’s not that I’m lazy or that I find ascending those five flights too challenging, but rather that I just forget. I walk into my lobby, and muscle memory almost takes over. I check my mail and boom, next thing I know I’ve pushed the button and gotten on the elevator. There have been times when I have actually gone back downstairs and repaired to the stairwell to complete my mission, but I’m just finding it hard to remember to do it.

Swearing off my iPod has been less complicated, although I threw that particular towel in today. In the ten days without wearing earbuds, I’ve noticed the ring minimally rise and fall in its ceaseless pitch, but not necessarily as the direct result of anything I’ve been doing – as far as I can tell, at least. This morning, I was just bored, so I slipped them back in and scored the latter half of my commute with some vintage New Order at a reasonable volume. No one is hurt by this.

In terms of the beer? Last night, after a bone-chilling walk home from the bottom of TrBeCa to the heart of the Village, I reconsidered my decisions. Yeah, I was able to turn it off for ten days, and can completely keep going, but why am I punishing myself? It’s not like someone’s going to hand me a fucking medal at the end of the month. I’m sick of drinking seltzer and tea in the evenings. I sprang for a six of Sapporo and indulged.

And with that, yes, I’ve technically failed Dry January again. I may go back to it this evening, but it almost doesn’t “count” now, not that anyone’s keeping score.

Weigh in, readers …. How are you fairing with your resolutions?

Subway Shenanigans

Personally speaking, as a native New Yorker, I hate riding the fucking subway and do it as infrequently as possible. Were it up to me, I’d walk everywhere, and usually endeavor to do so, but life, of course, doesn’t always work the way you want it to. As such, I brave the subways like everybody else, when I have to.

There’s a code of conduct one should observe when traveling by rail underground, although obviously not everyone adheres to it. Personally speaking, unless a subway car is close to empty, I usually prefer to stand. My kids never quite understand this, and I tell them that it’s because I’d prefer to be able to “spring into action” should I have to. That’s obviously something of a dramatic embellishment, but there is some truth to it.

While everyone has their own private stipulations, there are some rules that should be universal: Let passengers off before you get on, don’t stand blocking the doors, don’t eat aromatic food, wear deodorant, etc. One would like to think these and a few choice others go without saying. If only.

It comes and goes, but it strikes me that more recently, the New York City subway system has been besieged by a new plague of inconsiderate conduct. From manspreading and panhandling to assault and battery and all points in between, the indignities and affronts on unsolicited offer during your average subway ride are once again myriad. To help us tally these unfortunate instances comes Gothamist, who tidily compile archives of bad subway behavior under the tag “Subway Etiquette,” a category amply fed by the ability to publicly shame oblivious offenders via personal technology and social media. Find it all here.

Incidentally, you don’t have to go underground to have your day ruined on New York City mass transit. Late last week, my son and I boarded a curiously empty (always a red flag) bus on Third Avenue, only to discover that someone had taken a robust dump in the stepwell of the rear exit.

Only in New York.

Screw Your LimeWire

DISCLAIMER: I started writing this on Monday. When I came back to it today –- Tuesday -– I found that what I’d penned read a bit … maybe churlish is the word? But …. c’est la guerre.

--

Are we really there already?

To be fair, if I’m being kind, objective and fair-minded, the article I’m about to discuss here is ultimately not that different from the countless entries I’ve posted that have lionized, say, the lost art of lovingly curating a mixtape or any one of the myriad paeans to the long-shuttered, otherwise-forgotten record shops of my youth. I still live, breathe and pine for these arguable anachronisms.

But if you hadn’t already gleaned as much, with the fleeting exception of my own cherubic offspring, I don’t have a lot of time for young people, so being kind, objective and fair-minded about this piece isn’t really on the menu. This is my lawn …. you are cordially invited to remove thyselves from it.

A young writer named Daisy Jones of Noisey – an outlet I’ve railed about here a few times before – recently posted a weepy homage to LimeWire, a iffy file-sharing service from the 2000s that picked up the baton first brandished by Napster, enabling a new generation of nascent-albeit-fucking-lazy (fight me) music fans to furtively explore, unwittingly infect their computers and -– to some minds -– violate copyright law and steal music.

Here's the graph that really set my teeth on edge.

On LimeWire, you could lose yourself for hours searching for the perfect thing to listen to, and because it felt like no one was watching, that could be anything. Before then, the only way to access music was physical, or through radio and music TV, but those platforms were often consumed publicly, so had the propensity to be performative. Suddenly, you didn’t have to pretend to like watching Kerrang or Kiss or whatever was cool among your friends. You could download Britney albums until 2AM, or get heavily into Norwegian metal. Whatever: LimeWire made your taste yours.

She goes on. Read if for yourself.

Regardless of its arguable -- oh dear me, god forbid -– “propensity to be performative,” access to the physical manifestation of music went on to be sharply curtailed thanks to ground first broken by services like Napster and LimeWire. Within a relatively swift period of a decade and change, the rituals of prior generations were virtually decimated, as once-thriving circuits of record and disc shops – both independent mom-&-pop’s and big, established chains – were forced out of business and their stock in trade reduced and devalued into dated period-pieces or ironic hipster detritus.

I find it hard to fathom that I’m about to start a paragraph with this qualifier, but…

BACK IN MY DAY…, when you wanted to hear, search out, discover and/or procure new music, you had to actually put your pants on and LEAVE THE GODDAMN HOUSE to go to places and meet with people who could enable and assist you in said endeavor. If the radio and/or MTV weren’t satisfying your needs, it made sense to actually go to places where the music you were interested in might be found. Along the way, you were bound to meet similarly inclined folks and forge new relationships, hear new things you weren’t expecting, expand your horizons, explore your city and a host of other benefits.

Personally speaking, I made many a great friend and discovered an unquantifiable amount of new music this way. Yes, I had to actually leave my home and interact with people and go to new places that I didn’t know – shock, horror, outrage. In short order, I became part of a communal subculture. That’s pretty much all gone, now, thanks to the jack-booted march of a technology that caters to a generation weaned on convenience, entitlement and immediate gratification.

Our way was better.

2018: The Year in Photographs

If you spend any meaningful amount of time on this blog, or are foolish enough to follow me on Instagram, you already know that I take what some might consider an irresponsibly laborious amount of pictures. I can't help myself. Were I unable to share those photographs on social media or here on this blog, I don't think I would behave any differently. And in an era when one can capture striking images without a huge, hulking camera but with simply one's iPhone, I find myself routinely pausing throughout my travels to do just that. 

As such, here are some of my own favorite images I was lucky enough to capture this year. You may have seen some of these before, but I tried to eschew repeating shots from the Beirut trip, the  England trip and the summer, as I feel I've covered those already. Click on each to enlarge, should you feel so inclined. 

Anyway, please enjoy, and why not share your own? 

Goodbye to Stormy 2018

Technically, there are still a few days left of 2018, but for all intents and purposes, it’s over. As such, time to dust off this old thing. Let’s have at it.

What did you do in 2018 that you'd never done before?
Travel to the Middle East. Partake of Black Pudding. Submit a stool sample. Not all on one day, mind you.

Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My plans for the inevitable “Dry January” were stymied by the arrival of the bomb cyclone. We’ll see what happens this year.

Did anyone close to you give birth?
Friends of mine had children. No one in the immediate family.

Did anyone close to you die?
In the beginning of the year, my childhood friend Danny passed away. I wrote a few posts about it. Still hard to believe.

What countries did you visit?
I went to Lebanon in August (with a stopover in Paris) and England in November.

What would you like to have in 2019 that you lacked in 2018?
A responsible adult in the White House.

What date from 2018 will remain etched upon your memory?
I’m going to say September 12, which was significant for me in that it was both my organization’s company-wide Town Hall meeting (for which I orchestrated video coverage and content) in Nashville, Tennessee and the date of Killing Joke’s New York stop on their 40th Anniversary tour. I’d taken pains to arrange it so I could actually do both, but those plans collapsed, as discussed in histrionic detail here.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I’m proud of my continuing ascent at my place of work. The work I do is recognized and appreciated. That’s a nice feeling. Here's hoping I can sustain in 2019.

What was your biggest failure?
My little family has sorely outgrown our living space, but we have yet to find a working solution.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
Well, at one point, I had a scare with a tick. Then I developed a wicked case of Montezuma’s Revenge (read: traveler’s diarrhea) following the trip to Beirut. Then there was a sort of mystery condition that prompted a few invasive and uncomfortable tests (see stool sample answer above), that revealed nothing and went away as mysteriously as it had arrived. I’m sure you’re sorry you asked, now.

What was the best thing you bought?
Airline tickets for London to see the close of Killing Joke’s 40th Anniversary tour.

Whose behavior merited celebration?
Christine Blasey Ford

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Brett Kavanaugh, Matthew Whitaker, Susan Collins, Chuck Grassley, John Cornyn, Mike Pence, Lyndsey Graham.

What did you get really, really excited about?
Traveling to Beirut. Traveling to London to see Killing Joke.

Where did most of your money go?
Tuition for my kids’ schools.

What song will always remind you of 2018?
“Never Fight a Man with a Perm” by IDLES

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
I’d say I’m about the same. I’m worried about a few things, but overall am content with how things are going on a personal level. On a grander scale, 2018 was a year of constant incredulousness, shock, disgust and shame over the Trump Administration.

Thinner or fatter?
Certainly fatter.

Richer or poorer?
Feeling the latter in the wake of the holiday season. We’ll see when those Amex bills arrive.

What do you wish you'd done more of?
Relaxing with my wife and kids.

What do you wish you'd done less of?
Wasting time on social media. Arguing about politics with certain folks.

How did you spend Christmas?
Spread over Quogue, Manhattan, Brooklyn and West Chester, PA.

Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
No earthly idea.

Did you fall in love in 2018?
Was already in love.

How many one night stands in this last year?
Zero. Happily hitched.

What was your favorite TV program?
I quite liked “The Bodyguard.”

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I continue to hate Trump and his cronies and his supporters. 

What was the best book you read?
Without question, the “Beastie Boys Book.”

What was your greatest musical discovery?
From eons passed, I discovered that great collaboration of Robert Fripp and David Sylvian, and a band I’d entirely slept on called The Oblivians, who are amazing. I also became somewhat enthralled by two newer bands, specifically IDLES and Daughters, as I mentioned here.

What did you want and get?
I was finally able to see Killing Joke on their 40th Anniversary tour –- TWICE, no less (Oxford and London)

What did you want and not get?
Regime change.

What were your favorite films of this year?
I quite liked “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”, which was a refreshingly smart, very New Yorky film. I suppose I liked “Avengers: Infinity Wars,” but all those Marvel movies are starting to blur together for me.

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned an unseemly 51, and had a small celebration with my family.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Trump’s impeachment, indictment and incarceration.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2018?
Embarrassing Dad With a Band T-shirt Problem

What kept you sane?
My lovely wife and children.

What celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I normally don’t have an answer for this, but I’m going to say Hayley Atwell. She’s close to perfect.

What political issue stirred you the most?
Fuckin’ take your pick.

Who did you miss?
Pete Shelley, Stan Lee, Mark E. Smith

Who was the best new person you met?
Three of my wife’s cousins in Beirut, who are all totally excellent.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2018
Never lose your sense of humor, regardless of how bleak and dire things get.

Song lyric that sums up 2018
Not a current song, but from World Party’s “Ship of Fools,” this feels kinda accurate…

We're setting sail to the place on the map
from which no one has ever returned
Drawn by the promise of the joker and the fool
by the light of the crosses that burned.

Idles Redux

Last post about the IDLES for now …. maybe.

As if I couldn’t love them any more than I already do, I stumbled upon this video from their first album, Brutalism. I don’t own it yet, but will be rectifying that error shortly. In any event, the entirety of this video for “Stendhal Syndrome” is footage of burly, beardy bassist Andrew “Dev” Devonshire dancing inappropriately with great aplomb in some of the world’s more revered museums ….notably the Metropolitan Museum here in New York and the Saathci Gallery in London. I actually have a pic of my kids standing in front of one of the same paintings Dev dances in front of at about 0:22 (see below).

As endearingly silly as the video is, the backstory is quite compelling:

From Genius .com: In a statement to The Know, lead singer Joe Talbot said this about the song: I once sat on a bench in a gallery in Valencia. I stared in awe of a painting for a good while, I was moved to tears by the scene of a man holding a crucifix at the top of a mound of other figures grappling for the glory of God. I’m not religious but it captivated me to the point of nausea. I looked into this and the phenomenon which has happened before and since, it’s called Stendhal Syndrome.

Those moments in my life were not driven by any pretension but from something intrinsically fucking magical. Now, of course, there is an obvious class divide sustained in the art world and that will always be there so long as art is perceived as this language only to be spoken and understood by the rich but the likelihood of our songs being heard and in turn being listened to by the upper classes is very unlikely, so I thought I’d highlight the other side that helps keep up the bullshit; that “I could do that” attitude because it’s fucking ignorant and it’s lazy and why the fuck does one person’s voice have to be shut down because you could fucking do it! Shut up, you’re boring. You didn’t do it BUT YOU CAN and maybe if you did you’d be less defensive about other people expressing themselves and you not. All is love.

Enjoy:

Rest in Peace, Bleecker Bob Plotnik

I wrote about the significance of Bleecker Bob’s here seemingly more times than can be humanly quantified, the last meaningful post, I believe, being the one documenting my visit to the frankly mediocre Japanese restaurant that now operates in its former space. Above is how it looked in about 2010 or so (that’s m’self and Oliver).

The final chapter, alas, came this week with the news that “Bleecker Bob” Plotnik himself passed away. Plotnik suffered a stroke in 2001, and had been in declining health ever since.

Reactions to this news were candid and mixed. By most accounts, Bob was a frequently disagreeable and polarizing figure, prone to treating people fairly brusquely. Speaking as one of his frequent customers, I certainly weathered my share of his scorn on occasion.

That said, I do fondly remember one afternoon when my friend Rob B. and I were in there and Bob was involved in a surreal exchange with a trio of Scandiweigian metalheads. They’d evidently asked Bob to look at some rareified hair-metal artefact behind the counter, but their clipped, broken English was making the exchange somewhat painful for all parties concerned. Never known for his wellspring of patience, Bob was swiftly losing his easily-abandoned cool with these dudes, and even glanced at us for moral support at one point. My takeaway from that was that we may have been irritating shitheads to him, but we were HIS irritating shitheads. That’s as close to a warm’n’fuzzy moment about the man as I can recount.

Prior to working together at the New York Review of Records, estimable Brit rock-crit legend Kris Needs manned the cash-register at Bleecker Bob’s (indeed it was hirsute Kris who sold me my first vinyl copy of Acid Bath by Alien Sex Fiend). On Kris’ Facebook feed this morning, he posted this nice tribute to Bob…

Sad news; I worked at Bleecker Bob's for nearly three years (86-89). He could be a narcissistic oaf who treated his customers like shit and staff even worse, shouting, spitting when he spoke, getting me to run and get his McDonald's in icy blizzards, take his great dane Max out in all weathers with pooh sack ready, insulting to my friends and often treating me like a slave. But he also encouraged a weird fierce loyalty, looked after me when I was in hospital (catching pneumonia from those food runs!) and did much to bring great records to NYC (and export old LPs to the UK which I boxed in the basement). I didn't like it when old black guys came in to the store with their precious jazz collections, he gave them a dollar apiece like he was doing them a favour then marked them up to $40 a pop after they'd left and many other cruel traits but, underneath the scary broadsides lurked a heart of gold and he certainly didn't deserve to spend his last years crippled from a stroke. I fell victim to the city and had to leave his minimum wage employment, under something of a cloud I'm not proud of, but the man was an iron girder of the old NYC that has now vanished into the history books. RIP Bob.

Bleecker Bob Plotnik may have been a cantankerous, misanthropic curmudgeon, but my early days of music fandom would have been markedly dimmer without his shop.

Rest in peace, sir. 

Waxing Nostalgic

 

At first, I didn’t really know it was a thing that people did.

Back in 2017, you may remember, I posted a quick entry about an Instagram page dubbed Vinyl Wife, which showcased the doings of a young Finish lady with a penchant for displaying her collection of vinyl LPs. In short order, I soon gleaned that this was indeed a thing people did – pose for pictures with their favorite records. Given the school of thought – which I happen to share – that the tactile aspect of the physical manifestations of music is part of the whole experience (i.e. the appreciation of holding the complete work of art in your hand), I suppose it makes sense that people would take it to the logical extreme of posting pictures that further fetishize the physical media. It may seem silly, but it makes far more sense to me than posting pictures of your food, and people continue to do that.

In any case, I soon stumbled upon similarly inclined Instagram pages like Carol’s Vinyl and Mionyl that, ultimately, served the same end – albeit with varying extremes of presentation (Mio really goes all out with her posts). Gradually, these pages turned too multiple to count, invariably featuring an individual – usually female – playing to the camera while holding an album of arguable significance. The more prurient aspect of this practice is probably best observed on the Instagram page, Vinyl and Girl, which pretty much displays what it says on the label, so to speak. While I’d imagine said pictures are designed to titillate, I suppose it’s a testament to either my convictions or nerdy music snobbery that I immediately find someone significantly less attractive if they’re depicted lovingly caressing an album by post-1987 Aerosmith. But, y’know, to each their own.

Personally speaking, I am not really a vinyl fetishist of this variety at all. While I’ve amassed a strenuous amount of records in my day, I made the vinyl/compact-disc changeover back in the 90’s and never really looked back. That said, the thought of parting with any of my wax was and remains still largely anathema to me. As a result, my living space soon became compromised by unwieldly amounts of each medium … and let’s not forget all those pesky cassettes.

Then, it happened. I got married.

Once hitched, I opened up a mini-storage space deep in the West Village and stored a bunch of my stupid shit – including a crate or two of vinyl LPs -- there. Similarly, I took full advantage of my long-suffering mother’s good will and stored four or five beefy flight cases of vinyl (and boxes of cassettes) in the comparatively expansive basement of her home out on Long Island. In 2002, the wife and I moved out of my old apartment on East 9th Street and into a slightly larger space in more or less the same neighborhood (one better equipped to handle the arrival of children) and even more of my vinyl went into storage.

Times change and circumstances evolve. I closed down my West Village mini-storage space a few years back in favor of a cheaper, more convenient option in the basement of my building (one that we’ve since completely filled). Along with my CDs --- themselves becoming swiftly irrelevant artifacts of anachronism – our current apartment holds a smattering of my vinyl collection, with the rest of it remaining sequestered out in Long Island in my mom’s basement.

Periodically, I like to go downstairs and exhume it. Over this past long, holiday weekend, that’s exactly what I did — blighting my friends’ social media feeds with silly images of me brandishing cherished slabs of wax -- and a few select cassettes -- of eons past.

I am in no way competing with folks like Carol or Mio, but I now feel a new appreciation for what they do. Herewith some of the dubious evidence of last weekend….

Indulge me. 

Excelsior, Stan Lee

I realize he made it to 95, which is a damn impressive run, especially for a life as colorful as his. But I'm still heartbroken, and I have a hard time putting into words how very much the work of Stan Lee informed my childhood.

Life will be significantly less fun without him. Both my inner 12-year-old and my actual 12-year-old (Oliver) are crestfallen. This cover depiction of the mighty Ghost Rider pretty much sums up how I'm feeling.

Also, .....THIS:

Hold It Now, Hit It...

It should come as absolutely zero surprise to anyone that, given the things that I happen to preoccupy myself with, I think the new Beastie Boys book -- the imaginatively titled Beastie Boys Book -- is absolutely essential. I'm barely a third of the way in, and I'm practically ecstatic about it. 

Go get it.