Flaming Pablum

My Mosaic Valentine

Oddly fitting, so close to Valentine’s Day.

A few years back, I happened on some photographs of stalwart proto-shoegazer band My Bloody Valentine taken in New York City around the time of their watershed 1991 album, Loveless. I was quasi-lucky enough to see them on that tour at the Ritz, on a high-decibel triple bill with Dinosaur Jr. and Superchunk that I am convinced took a palpable toll on my hearing. In any case, in one or two of the photos, the band were depicted standing with their backs against a mosaic pattern that was inarguably the work of Jim Power, an East Village fixture whose signature art adorns many corners of the neighborhood to this day. The thing that was so perplexing, however, was that the picture of MBV also featured these strange, mask-like faces that looked so incredibly familiar to me, but I could not place where they might be. In my downtime, I searched far and wide or a wall with those faces on it, but always came up empty.

Eventually, I gave up and lost the pics in question. Life went on.

Last week, someone invoked My Bloody Valentine in one online forum or another, and up popped that very picture again. Here it is now.

Again, those strange background faces jumped out at me. I knew I’d seen them before, but certainly not recently.

Eventually, I figured it out.

The mask-like faces are no longer on that façade, that being on the southern side of the street on St. Marks Place just steps to the west of Avenue A. At the time, that would have been the side of rock’n’roll bar Alcatraz. It would later turn into a sushi bar and is more recently a taco place called Empello al Pastor.

Like I said, the faces are gone (knocked off by a vandal or Jim Power collector fanboy?), but the rest of the mosaic is still intact. You can see the same side of the patterned dish to the left of guitarist Kevin Shield’s head right above my son Oliver’s head below.

Mystery solved.

For the uninitiated, this is My Bloody Valentine....

More about My Bloody Valentine on Flaming Pablum here….

Jobless, Marooned & Loveless

Valentinnitus

All You Need is Loveless

Central Park ... After Dark

Back in August of 2019, I started composing another long, detailed post about my years growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was ostensibly meant as kind of a companion piece to a long post I’d penned about my encounters with some (very) small-time crime in that era. This post was going to concentrate on the significance of visiting Central Park during the less advisable hours of the evening, something myself and certain friends of mine used do with blithely idiotic frequency. I’m not sure why, but I believe I abandoned the post because so much of it was wrapped up with my memories of my friend Danny, who passed away in 2018, and reconciling certain stuff was just all a bit too much.

In a nutshell, though, in the process of unspooling those anecdotes about favorite, clandestine spots we used to frequent in the Park during off hours, I was going to underscore the obvious underlying message, that being that Central Park at night — then as now — is nothing to fuck with. The stories of my teenaged exploits in that capacity were not meant as nostalgic boasts so much as evidence of youthful ignorance. While it might sound cliched and/or even quaint, now, the nocturnal iteration of Central Park accrued a certain fearful reputation for damn good reason.

That said, most of my own indiscretions in this capacity usually occurred in strategic locations that were barely a few steps from the street. Apart from the few instances when my late friend Danny and I foolhardily opted to bike through Central Park in the pitch black of night, we were usually to be found in frantic sprinting distance from the relative safety of Fifth Avenue and points east. The deeper you walked into the Park at night, the greater your chances of finding trouble were.

In the ensuing decades since my high school days, there have been myriad instances of crime — from the banal to the unspeakable — that have gone down after dark in the Park. From the The Preppy Murder case in 1986 to the Central Park Jogger case in 1989 to the teenage stabbing case at the Lake in 1997 and countless other less notorious incidents, it has been a haven for foul play. Only a year ago was a man found hanging from a tree near the 74th Street entrance, and only this past September were bodies pulled out of both the Reservoir uptown and Swan Lake down at the southeastern end of the Park.

While inarguably one of the most tranquil and beautiful locations in all of Manhattan, the verdant splendor of Central Park should not lull you into thinking that horribly bad shit can’t happen to you there.

Earlier today, while brazenly wasting time on YouTube instead of working, I came across the video below, presented by a bright-eyed, freshly scrubbed gent named Brian from a channel called Perfect Little Planet. Shot in 2016, this video posits the question: “Is Central Park Safe at Night?”

Let’s watch, shall we?

Before we dive into the meat of this video, how astonishingly annoying is that bit featuring all the "Pokemon Go!” zombies? Jesus Christ!!!

Taking the perspective of the tireless running enthusiast, the video seeks to reassure late-night joggers that Central Park is indeed safe, if you use your head and stick to “well lit” and more populated areas, although one might think that would all go without saying. To be fair, though, just being “well lit” isn’t necessarily enough. There are certain portions of the Park he cites as well lit that are still comparatively remote and Hell and gone from an easily accessible exit back to the streets. And don’t forget — when you’re somewhere “well lit,” not only can you see things, … but you, too, can be seen. That isn’t always an advantage.

When Brian gets to the infamous 102nd Street Crossing — where the Central Park Jogger was attacked and dragged into a ravine in the nearby North Woods — he tidily glosses over the incident by merely alluding to it as “bad stuff.” This feels a bit disingenuous.

Personally speaking, I didn’t embark on a star-crossed running regimen until it was basically far too late, and my middle-aged knees quickly put a stop to all that. As such, I cannot fully empathize with Brian’s zest for running. More to the point, I have nothing against people running in the Park (better that than on the street), but were I asked to opine as to the best times to attempt it, I still wouldn’t recommend after dark. I can also fully appreciate marveling at stirring, vespertine views and empty straightaways as much as the next guy, but they might just come with a terrible price that you could otherwise wisely avoid.

But, Hell, I'm still no expert. I'm sure Brian's intentions are in the right place. But what about you? Do YOU think Central Park is safe at night?

Weigh in....

Desk Before Dishonor

As alluded here elsewhere, after two and a half decades in the trenches of professional journalism, I am currently a director of content and editorial services for a prominent performing rights organization. One of my myriad duties involves putting together a weekly newsletter for our thousands of affiliates. Said newsletter generally contains some original content, but we frequently fill it out with bits of pertinent content from around the web. On Mondays and Tuesdays, I am regularly searching for news items, interviews, articles, podcasts, listicles and profiles that might provide insight, advice and/or solutions for burgeoning songwriters looking to catch a break, learn some best practices, hone their craft, sharper their networking skills and basically advance their careers in one capacity or another. Ultimately, our aim is to provide our affiliates an encouraging leg up, and furnish them whenever we can with tools, tips and tricks of the trade for navigating the wilderness of the music industry writ large. We want to help them succeed, basically.

In the last couple of weeks, I stumbled on a podcast that — while technically also tailored to unspooling the intricacies of career advancement for the otherwise creatively inclined — is really meant for those less doe-eyed about the endeavor. In a nutshell, this podcast shines a light on those who have essentially had to forsake their more creatively fulfilling trajectories in order to pursue vocations that stand greater chances of keeping them financially solvent and gainfully employed. Fittingly, the podcast is called Killed by Desk, a sly nod, for those of you not saddled by worthless rock trivia, to a comparably titled Motörhead ditty from the mid-80s.

I first heard about it, recently, when my friend Jon Fine assumed the hot seat (as detailed here), but KBD has also featured other Flaming Pablum favorites like former Antidote vocalist-turned-filmmaker/author/archivist Drew Stone of The New York Hardcore Chronicles, Penelope Houston of The Avengers, Brooks Headly of Born Against and Chicken John Rinaldi, formerly of Letch Patrol, Sissy and GG Allin & The Murder Junkies.

Like the episode with Jon, the conversations are enlightening and hilarious and really worth your time. Check it all out by clicking right here.

"The Greenwich Village Story"

As recounted in this ancient post, I believe the first time I ever visited Greenwich Village as a snot-nosed Upper East Side kid was at some point in the mid-to-late `70s, when I was taken on an antique-scouting trip with my mother and step-father. Sometime after that, my father (divorced from my mother since my birth) rented a one-bedroom apartment on West 10th Street, opposite a firehouse with a garishly painted (for the era) garage door (more about that here), so we periodically went down to visit him. It seemed like an entirely different city from the one we lived in uptown.

Years after that, my mom befriended an artist character named Irwin who lived on Mott Street, just across from Old St. Patrick’s Basilica. I remember going down there with her to visit, a few times and walking around the Village and SoHo and being completely captivated.

By the early `80s, I was finally let off my leash and started exploring downtown on my own, my principle destination being the original Forbidden Planet on the west side of Broadway at 12th Street (more about that here). My father, by this point, had split from East 10th street, logged a few years in England and repaired back to New York to another one-bedroom apartment on East 74th. But he was working, at the time, at Forbes, which was then located over on Fifth Avenue and 12th Street. I’d go down ostensibly to “visit” him and then run around the Village, hitting Forbidden Planet and a few other likely spots. It was around this same time that a classmate of mine, Walt, moved to Cornelia Street with his dad and discovered Bleecker Bob’s. From there, there was no going back. Greenwich Village and its surrounding environs had all the cool stuff. The shops were cooler. The vibe was more relaxed. The people were freakier. There was more history. There was more to do and see than the neighborhoods I’d already wrung dry uptown. This was the place for me.

That was then.

Today, I’ve lived in Greenwich Village for over 25 years… practically half my life. But the Greenwich Village of today only dimly looks like the neighborhood I was first taken to as a small boy, much less the storied bohemian enclave it was in decades prior to that. Most of the stuff that first captured my imagination is gone. The cool shops are mostly vanished. The vibe isn’t relaxed at all. The freaky people are largely gone. There’s still a lot of history, although many don’t seem to care about it, and the sights and topography keep getting remade and remodeled. For all intents and purposes, it’s not all that different from points uptown — only more expensive.

But despite all the neighborhood's changes and diminishment (and let’s not even get into what the pandemic has done to it), I have no plans to go anywhere else. My kids grew up on these streets. Greenwich Village is our home.

In any case, while this was initially just supposed to be a quick preamble, it’s turned into a dangerously sepia-toned paean to the lost Greenwich Village, weepily composed to tee up the curious film below, “Greenwich Village Story.” Here’s the backstory….

Greenwich Village Story by Jack O'Connell shows the Village in the early sixties, teeming crowds in Washington Square Park, impromptu hootenany sessions, beatnik poets reciting by candlelight in coffee houses. Scenes are picturesque and germane to Jack O'Connell's tale of young love and desire for a place in the arts in Gotham. The film was invited to the Berlin, Venice and Locarno Film Festivals.

Sit back and enjoy a slice of Greenwich Village of yesteryear….

Goodbye, Mr. Puspurica

As should come as no surprise to anyone who regularly reads this stupid blog, I was something of a weird kid.

I was strenuously shy, socially awkward and regularly hindered by bouts of self-doubt. I was endlessly self-conscious about a physiognomical anomaly (I was born with only a partial eyelid on my left eye, which — along with making me look slightly different — came with an early, pediatrician-mandated requirement for me to periodically wear an eyepatch over my “good” eye to help buffer the vision in the afflicted one — I do not recommend this for your children). Matters were not helped in this capacity by my parents’ acrimonious divorce, which had transpired around the same time as the happy occasion of my birth. While something of a common problem, at the time (divorce was all the rage back then, as I understand it), it did indeed come with accompanying fallout that took a complex toll on myself and my sister that, even now, we are both still coming to terms with. Beyond all that stuff, I had no interest in sports, was essentially a slight kid with narrow shoulders and I had something of a pointedly macabre sensibility.

But there was one thing that saved me. I could draw.

Prone to spending hours in my room filling up pads with ornate drawings of fanged horrors ripe for an H.P. Lovecraft novel, I reveled in my rudimentary gift for turning a blank piece of paper into a portal into another world. When I was in third grade at St. David’s, the private grammar school on the Upper East Side I was ridiculously fortunate to be able to attend, my mother went in for a conference with my homeroom teacher. As I’ve heard it recounted, she took my mom aside and expressed an emphatic concern for my well being. “Every time I ask him to draw something,” she said, “it comes with horns, bat wings, tentacles and bloody fangs.” Mercifully, my mom laughed it off. “Oh, that’s just his little way of looking at the world.”

Despite being this little oddball, my nascent talent for illustration earned me a tiny modicum of respect from my otherwise suspicious classmates. I couldn’t kick a soccer ball without giving myself a concussion, but I could draw the shit out of anything you asked of me. This particular ability was recognized, encouraged and nurtured by one, specific teacher at my grade school — a Mr. Nik Puspurica.

Mr. Purpurica was a tall, big-hearted, pipe-smoking Texan with an exotic Greek (I think) last name. He spoke with a warm, Southwestern drawl and very rarely parted with his cool. Whether you were artistically inclined or not, everyone looked forward to Mr. Puspurica’s art class. You’d get assignments and grades just as with every other subject, but the accent was always on creative expression and exploration. He’d give us introductory walk-throughs about using different media, but would then let us rip — encouraging us to let our imaginations commandeer our grasps of the tools at our disposal. While I may have struggled with speaking up in other classes or wrestled with understanding certain other fields of study (I barely made it out of math class alive), I felt entirely at ease in art class — something Mr. Purpurica noticed from the get-go.

While he gave everyone his full attention, Mr. P took my investment in art very seriously, regularly encouraging me to try new disciplines and broaden my scope. He’d never let me abandon a project when I’d gotten discouraged by my failure to master it immediately. He taught me to be patient and to follow through. I remember privately beaming with a pride that almost overwhelmed me when, upon the completion of one drawing I’d done, he immediately tacked it up on the board behind his desk and left it there for all the other classes to see. It was a validation I’d never encountered before. In my ten years at St. David’s, Mr. P’s classroom was my sanctuary for learning new things and a confidence-building safe haven that prepared me to better deal with the rest of the world.

I owe that all to Mr. Puspurica.

I only saw him fleetingly after I graduated from St. David’s in 1981. I gather he stayed on at the school for another seven years. I remember spying his name and reaching out on one social media platform or another several years back, but never heard back from him. I always wanted to get back in touch and let him know what a profound effect he’d had on me as a strange, shy little kid.

Yesterday, I was very sad to field a note from my school that Mr. Puspurica evidently passed away back in May of this year.

Thank you, Mr. P, wherever you are. I hope you know you made a huge difference.

John's Bag

I first came in contact with John Darnielle via Ilxor, which — as Urban Dictionary so succinctly describes it — was “a rather fine but occasionally tempestuous, pretentious and easily-distracted internet-based message board, initially conceived as a music forum.” I should’t say “was” as, technically, it’s still going today (find it here). John and I were both regular fixtures there for a great while in the late 90s through to the late-2000’s. Or at least that’s when I largely dropped out. John might still regularly participate there, I’m not sure.

While it might seem like heresy to some, I must admit that upon first engaging with John, I was entirely unfamiliar with his status as the singer/songwriter in the Mountain Goats. As far as I knew, John was just some similarly inclined music head with just as much of a passion for discussing all facets of the subject, and given his predilections for several of the same hoary goth, punk and metal bands that I voluminously espoused on a regular basis, we became fast friends in that forum. From where I was standing, John and I spoke the same language, and he managed to jovially overlook my pugnacious penchant for contentious overstatement (something not exactly everyone in said forum was inclined to do, much to my continued embarrassment, this many eons later). As the years went by, we bonded further over a mutual affliction (John and I both suffer from Tinnitus, although I haven’t heard an update from him on the subject in some time) and both became doting dads.

The funny thing, though, is that while I just sorta considered him this super-knowledgable music-geek pal o’ mine, it only gradually dawned on me that he was critically revered in several significant circles. Beyond being an established musician of some renown, John’s also a burgeoning author, having now published a couple of well received novels. Not too long back, another friend of mine was looking at my contact lists and spotted John’s name. “Dude, you know John Darnielle?” For some reason — inarguably to John’s credit as a regular, approachable human being — it still never occurs to me that he’s this crucial figure.

In any case, the last time I saw John in person, I believe, was actually the first time I saw John in person. I was walking up Thompson Street in SoHo and he suddenly shouted my name (see pic above). To this day, John and I are in fairly regular contact on Facebook, but I just spotted something that showcases both the bottomless depth of John’s affinity for music and his perpetually inclusive, affable nature. John was featured on “What’s In My Bag?”, Amoeba Records’ excellent web series I wrote about back on this post. To my mind, despite his numerous accolades and notable cameos (he was a featured guest on Damien Abraham’s “Turned Out a Punk” podcast, last summer), this is a true honor befitting his vast wealth of knowledge and his convivial, big-hearted nature. Way to go, John! 

I am in awe and roiling with envy.

Enjoy….

2020: My Year in Pictures

This post is invariably going to cause me a lot of heartache, given my oft-cited blogging service's ongoing problem with broken images. But, here's hoping that'll abate. In any case, as you may have noticed, I take a lot of goddamn pictures. You may have seen several of these on this blog over the past 12 months, or you may have spotted them on my Instagram page, if you follow that. Whichever the case, here are some of my favorite images of the year in chronological order.

If possible, enjoy...

 

 

The Mystery Song

I used to have a problem with Patti Smith. I just never heard what everyone else claimed was so groundbreaking about her music, and I found her records to be sort of mewlingly overwrought. I did not equate her with her storied peers in bands like Television and The Ramones, etc. This opinion did me no favors.

Were that not enough, I was then asked by a rock-writer friend of mine, a German gent named Sky Nonhoff, to pen a chapter in a book he was putting together about sacred cows. Sky wanted me to address Patti’s oft-celebrated album, Horses, and give it the redressing it allegedly deserved. So, I did that, pulled no punches and went from being a passive non-fan of Patti Smith to an open detractor. The book came out — albeit only in Germany (I have a copy, but I’ll be damned if I can tell how Sky edited my copy) and the deal was sealed. Just for posterity, I re-posted my original English text here on my stupid blog. This was was even later sourced, much to my embarrassment, in Eric Wendell's 2014 book, "Patti Smith: America's Punk Rock Rhapsodist." Again, this did me no favors. 

After years of alienating friends of mine with my continued reluctance to capitulate to the cult of Patti Smith, I started to suspect that my position was becoming an untenable one for lots of folks who otherwise liked and tenuously respected me (I had a similar problem with the Grateful Dead). As if on cue, Patti Smith published her memoir, “Just Kids.” I didn’t race to the bookshop for a copy, but — being unemployed that summer — I had lots of unsolicited free time, so eventually picked it up and read it, almost devouring the book whole in a only a couple of sittings.

In that rarest of instances, Patti’s book completely upended my preconceptions about her, and I suddenly felt like a world-class jackass for shooting my mouth off about her for all those years. I recanted with another post on my stupid blog, for whatever that was worth.

This all said, while I took back all the mean, dismissive thing I’d written about Patti Smith, I still didn’t really enjoy her music. I still found so much of her vocal delivery to be sort of cloying and affected — not unlike the same problem I’d formerly had with Tom Waits. But where I was able to overcome my Waits problem, I still had a hard time getting past Patti’s cadence and histrionics. I respected her way more than I’d ever used to, but I still didn’t want to hear her music, if I could avoid it.

Last night, I was coming home from visiting a loved one in NYU Langone Hostpial on 34th and First Avenue, zig-zagging my way slowly to the southwest through the bitterly cold and dark streets of the Medical Corridor. For whatever reason, this stretch of Manhattan always makes me think of New York City in the grim late 70’s. Sure, much of it has been re-built and radically gentrified like the rest of the island, but there’s still a bit of that dour, function-over-form, brutalist aesthetic that makes it feel depressing and charmless. As such, whenever I’m on that stretch, I tend to flip my iPod to listen to bands like the Jim Carroll Band, Richard Hell & The Voidoids and the afore-cited Television — artists whose music defined Manhattan’s vibe back then. In the middle of listening to a playlist I’d made in 2015, filled with those bands and others like Missing Foundation, The Feelies, The Lounge Lizards and the Dead Boys, this one song suddenly filled my headphones and almost stopped me in my frigid track right on Second Avenue.

It sounded like Patti Smith being backed by a way-less-indulgent ensemble, anchored by a taut, pugnacious groove and a suitably Television-like riff. Holy shit!! How did I ever miss this? Listening intently as I walked further, I couldn’t recognize the track as ever having been on Horses, nor later records like Easter or Radio Ethiopia. Was it from the “Piss Factory” era? Wracking my brain to identify the true provenance of the song, I simply hit play again without looking. How did this song even get on my iPod? Where did I get it, and how have I never appreciated it in all these years?

When I could no longer unspool the riddle and still without a flicker of an answer, I gave up and looked.

It wasn’t Patti Smith at all, but rather a comparatively obscure band from the original CBGB set called The Erasers. I’d gotten the song off the Numero Group’s truly excellent 2015 box set of the Ork Records stable. Prior to this cut, the only Erasers song I was even aware of was their fleeting turn in Amos Poe’s movie, “The Foreigner,” where they play a song called “No Se,” while the film’s protagonist Max gets beaten up by members of The Cramps. You can see that here.

Removed from the context of all their esoteric, historical minutia, when I heard “I Won’t Give Up” by the Erasers, I *immediately* assumed it was Patti Smith, which makes me wonder if others made that same assumption at the time.

In any case, today is Patti Smith’s birthday. If you are so inclined, cue up a bit of her music and raise a toast, but maybe also enjoy this taste of the Erasers, who probably wouldn’t have recorded anything were it not for Patti knocking down the original doors. For more about them click here.

 

Goodbye & Go to Hell, 2020

I'd suggest it’s fair to say that 2020 was a year like no other. That said, just because we are approaching the end of the calendar year, that doesn’t mean that the problems of 2020 are necessarily over. Hopefully, 2021 will provide the remedies we so sorely lacked in 2020. In any case, here’s the annual survey, for whatever it’s worth.

What did you do in 2020 that you'd never done before?
Instead of citing a host of predictable unpleasantries, I’ll kick this off with a light-hearted answer: I carved my first turkey.

Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Nope, I rarely do and probably won’t until they are mandated by a medical professional.

Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes, my sister-in-law gave birth to a lovely little boy.

Did anyone close to you die?
Mercifully, despite the carnage of the crisis, no one in my immediate circle passed away.

What countries did you visit?
Surely, you jest.

What would you like to have in 2021 that you lacked in 2020?
Vaccinations.

What date from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory?
Probably March 15, the day both my wife’s office and mine issued the “work from home” directive.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Staying gainfully employed, reasonably healthy and marginally sane.

What was your biggest failure?
Failing to note or anticipate a duplicitous vendor’s reluctance to remind me about a certain contractual clause. This was an expensive oversight.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
I managed to dodge COVID-19, but I did somehow still find time to zealously bruise my ribcage whilst trying to exit a bathtub. My wife declared it “the least Punk Rock thing, ever!”

What was the best thing you bought?
For some reason, getting it delivered was a Bataan Death March of false starts and delays, but we got a new Casper bed, which is indeed quite nice.

Whose behavior merited celebration?
Health care professionals, essential workers and my two excellent children, who've gotten through this difficult experience with a minimal amount of complaint and are both thriving as high school students and exemplary individuals. 

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
The Trump Administration, the Republican party and embarrassingly large swaths of the American electorate (but mercifully not large enough).

What did you get really, really excited about?
Election 2020 was pretty compelling, all things considered.

Where did most of your money go?
School tuitions.

What song will always remind you of 2020?
For whatever reason, during the summer months, we kept a certain Rolling Stones compilation in the car’s disc player, and I was prone to frequently play “Bitch” at irresponsible volumes.

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
Honestly speaking, despite the tumult of this year and the state of the world, at the moment, I feel it would be remiss of me to do any complaining. I’m fine. My wife and kids are fine. Our extended family is fine. We’re getting on with it. Not everyone has been so lucky.

Thinner or fatter?
Absolutely fatter. The pervasive attitude of “fuck it, it’s a pandemic!” -- when applied to consumption and imbibement -- became unfortunately de rigueur, after a while, and I’m now feeling it’s time to put that back in check. Wish me luck.

Richer or poorer?
Well, certainly not richer, but as mentioned above, I have no right to complain when others have suffered much greater losses than I have.

What do you wish you'd done more of?
I’m having a hard time answering this, as options were pretty slim, for the most part. There was a freelance project that I participated in that, in retrospect, I wish I’d contributed more to. I’m happy with my part of it, but I now feel I should have given it more time and done a bit more for it.

What do you wish you'd done less of?
Stressing out.

How did you spend Christmas?
Just the four of us at home. Kept it simple.

Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
Normally, I don’t know the answer to this, but in the COVID era, I believe I spent an inordinate amount of time on calls (and Zoom conferences) with my team at work. Honestly speaking, we’re the better for it, in many ways. We’ve become a more efficient unit.

Did you fall in love in 2020?
I was already in love, and we marked our 19th wedding anniversary in the summer.

How many one night stands in this last year?
I didn’t, given that -- despite many flaws -- I am a faithful husband. That said, who would actually answer this question?

What was your favorite TV program?
It seems like I watched it a million years ago, now, but I quite enjoyed “Ozark,” which has totally redeemed Laura Linney for me, after her godawful turn in the indefensible "Love Actually." That, and a French series called “Call My Agent” (or “Dix Pour Cent” in French).

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Well, I don’t know if I hate any new people, per se, but my roiling hatred for Donald J. Trump has only increased, especially now in his petulant and destructive lame-duck period.

What was the best book you read?
Probably “Waiting for Another War” by Trevor Ristow. Rise and reverberate!

What was your greatest musical discovery?
I answered this in sweeping detail on this recent post.

What did you want and get?
A Biden/Harris win.

What did you want and not get?
Trump removed from office prior to serving his full term and locked behind bars.

What were your favorite films of this year?
I cannot honestly remember seeing any “new” films. There were a few documentaries I enjoyed, like “Where Does a Body End,” about SWANS (the band).

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 53, which is a shitty number, and I had a lovely dinner with my wife and kids.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Trump leaving office in disgrace and in handcuffs.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2020?
Normally, I write something pithy here, but I had no personal fashion concept this year. It was not, as they say, “top of mind.”

What kept you sane?
The hope of Trump losing the election and of the imminent arrival of a COVID vaccine.

What celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I normally don’t have a good answer for this one, either, but I have to say I think Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is kinda damn sexy.

What political issue stirred you the most?
The fact that it was a political issue at all is astonishingly appalling, but the mask debate.

Who did you miss?
I continue to miss certain departed members of my family, but am very grateful they didn’t have to deal with the bullshit of this year. Beyond that, … Terry Jones, Andy Gill, Florian Schneider, Dave Greenfield, Eddie Van Halen, Neil Peart, Hal Wilner, Bill Withers. I’m sure I’m forgetting others.

Who was the best new person you met?
I don’t know that I met anyone new, this year, other than my new little nephew.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020
WEAR A FUCKING MASK AND BELIEVE IN SCIENCE, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES!

Song lyric that sums up 2020
Well, I believe Cop Shoot Cop may have said it best…

It's making me sick,
I want no part of it
Stop waving that flag
All you idiots bought right into it
And who's left holding the bag?
Surprise, surprise.
Surprise, surprise.
The government lies.

My Christmas Injury, or "The Least Punk Rock Thing, Ever!"

I turned 53, back in October — a somewhat ignominious number I didn’t really know what to do with.

The big one was obviously 50, but after that, it all gets a bit vague. Regardless, here in my fifty-third year, I have started to notice certain crucial things. First and foremost is my vision. Where before I kept a pair of “readers” handy in the event I needed to study items on a menu, I now practically need them to see just about anything, suggesting that it’s high time to graduate out of mere “readers” and go see a goddamn optometrist for a proper eye exam and a genuinely effective pair of glasses.

Second is the laundry list of things I should have taken care of about three years ago — various medical tests, and whatnot, that one is supposed to tackle when one crosses the rubicon of a certain age — that I haven’t yet fit into my schedule. I was indeed on the path to taking care of some of those things until the pandemic turned everything upside down. Various appointments were cancelled that, as yet, have not been rescheduled.

Third has been the effects of the pandemic itself. I don’t mean the daily stress, inconvenience and alleged “freedom”-impairment of having to wear masks and maintain social distance whilst walking amongst the potentially infected, but rather the comparatively insouciant attitude towards eating and drinking that has become inherent during the COVID crisis. Where once mindfulness may have been the order the day, the coronavirus ushered in a new era of indifference towards such po-faced propriety. That was certainly fun for a while, but inevitably it comes with a price.

That price is, of course, weight gain. I haven’t stepped on a scale in the last ten months, but I’m reasonably certain I don’t need that apparatus to credibly deduce that I’ve put on a few pounds since March.

I’m fully aware of all these things, and do have at least a loose plan to remedy them, but I was abruptly served with another reminder of my advancing age, this week, that has left me literally wincing.

On Saturday night, we made a plan to get together with a pair of my wife’s sisters and their families for a de facto holiday celebration. Trying to be as responsible as possible, we all met a local favorite restaurant and sat in the frigid outdoors, largely masked and duly distanced. Under the glow of a couple of frankly middling heat lamps and buoyed by the Dutch courage (or, in this case, Greek) of a few Mythos beers, we made the most of it, but — after a while — the unrelenting chill of the mid-December climate rendered itself impossible to ignore. Halfway into a genuinely compelling true-crime anecdote unspooled by my brother-in-law John, I suddenly started feeling my extremities going numb. Game as we all were to support the restaurant and spend at least a modicum of the holiday time together we otherwise normally would have, it simply got just too fucking cold. We all paid up, waved goodbye to each other and all went home.

By the time we walked in the door, I was feeling cold, congested and miserable. I tried to fight the good fight for a bit on the couch with (another) beer, but after a moment, suggested that I should probably take a shower to warm up and then go to bed. I then dubiously decided I would take a bath, instead. As if on cue, my wife asked “will you even fit in our bathtub?” This was less a remark about my encroaching girth or freakish height and more about the diminutive size of our apartment’s facilities. I waved her off and adjourned to the bath.

As is so often the case, I should have listened to the wife.

Technically, I did indeed “fit” in our tub, but it was by no means comfortable, much less relaxing. After a soaking for a spell, I decided to hoist myself up and out. That’s when it happened.

In a split-second miscalculation of how slippery things were, I lost my grip and slammed my side against the unrelenting cast iron wall of the tub, giving my ribcage a massive jolt that knocked the wind out of me. When I was no longer seeing stars, I sat back up and immediately knew I’d sustained some sort of injury, but whether it was a cracked rib or simply bruised one was still uncertain. When I hobbled out of the bathroom like Ebeneezer Scrooge a few moments later, acute with pain, my wife gave me a look that was sympathetic, but iced with a bracing patina of “told ya so.”

“That’s, like, the least Punk Rock thing, ever,” Peggy chuckled, knowing how to effectively kick a man when he’s down.

Anyway, that was Saturday. It’s now Thursday, and while the pain has subsided to a degree, it’s still very much with me. Sitting up proves to be sharply painful, but not nearly as painful as when I happen to sneeze. My chiropractor took a look and assured me that it was just a bruise, recalling that classic Yuletide anthem by the Happy Flowers, “If It Was Broken, You’d Be Screaming.” In time, it will heal.

In the short term, I’m trying to look at the bright side … It could have been a lot worse.