Flaming Pablum

Fox in Sox

Trust me when I affirm that nothing I could write here today would be as brilliant as the clip below.

Enjoy. You're welcome.

Life As We Know It ... Now

Back on March 10, I posted a quick little screed about all the things that were suddenly getting canceled as a result of precautionary measures to stem the roiling tide of coronavirus infections. I rattled off a laundry list of events in my own little sphere of existence that were either indefinitely postponed or knocked off the calendar entirely, closing with an exasperated little flourish of “I’m getting fed up with this shit.”

Ah, fed up indeed.

Had I known that, seven weeks later, we’d all be where we (still) are today, I may have worded it differently. Or not. I certainly was fed up, but I’m not sure I was entirely aware of the magnitude of what was shortly to come.

Seven days after that post, my wife, kids and I made the decision to literally escape New York City, a lucky, undeniable privilege many of our friends and colleagues were not able to similarly take advantage of. They’re still there, sheltering in place and staying indoors in a city renowned for its tireless hustle’n’bustle, now rendered unrecognizable as a veritable ghost town.

No one is enjoying this. It’s not normal, it’s not easy, it’s not comfortable, and it sure as shit isn’t fun. But we’re all doing it, because it’s the smart, responsible thing to do.

Whoops, well not so fast.

In certain states across the nation, pockets of science-doubting, Trump-loving folks are actively protesting to “re-open” their respective states, some more vehemently than others -- see the strenuously confused little rocket scientist pictured at the bottom of this post. While some are motivated by the very real and drastic ramifications of the prolonged shut-down directives wreaking havoc on the economy and their livelihoods, still others are wedding it with a reason to get their “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and their precious assault rifles out to make a statement about the violation of their Constitutionally protected freedoms, equating the public health recommendations, shelter-in-place directives and advisories to cover your nose and mouth with a mask when in public as the perilous first step towards succumbing to communism.

As if.

The bottom line is this: The sheer force of your will to re-open the economy will in no way minimize or diminish the very real COVID-19 threat. By being impatient and opening things prematurely, you're essentially feeding the virus and gravely delaying its abatement.

Be smarter. Be less stubborn. Think beyond yourselves. There are no corners to cut here.

The Street Light

Pretentious Preamble:

There’s a unique sort of trope director David Lynch regularly employs throughout his work that’s become one of his signature moves, if you will. With his inimitable blend of intangible nuance, Lynch manages to imbue certain, otherwise banal, inanimate objects with a heightened degree of sinister significance. Through Lynch’s lens, innocuous items like electrical sockets, radiators and blinking traffic lights take on an inexplicable aura of enigmatic menace. While there’s nothing inherently scary about the images in questions, Lynch -- through the power of his elliptical narratives and his particular use of light, sound and music -- is brilliantly able to assign each with powerful implications of something deeper, something unseen and, usually, something unspeakably terrifying. It’d probably be a tired cliche if he didn’t pull it off so well.

Perhaps I’ve just watched too many David Lynch films.

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It’s the beginning of our sixth week out here at my mother’s house in Quogue. Time has moved strangely, during this unprecedented period. The days can be very long, but the weeks fly by. The family has already gone through several phases — stir-craziness, boredom, agitation, fatigue, etc. While we’re settled into a routine, it still feels far from normal, which is apt, because nothing about this is situation is normal.

My mother moved into this house in 1996, I believe, after she sold both her previous cottage and her Manhattan apartment, bought this bigger place and made Quogue her permanent residence. I met my wife only a couple of years after mom got this house, and we’ve been coming out here in the summers and on holidays ever since. Our children have grown up running up and down these stairs and playing in the backyard.

That’s one of the reasons this period feels so alien. We normally just associate this house with vacation time and with my mom. Mom’s not here — she’s hunkered down in Florida — and this is no vacation. There’s a cognitive dissonance in trying to go about the remote workday while in a place normally designated as a space to get away from all that.

But there’s another thing about this stay that feels different, an element I’d either never noticed before, or that possibly wasn’t there.

The street light on the telephone pole across the street.

I’m pretty sure the pole has been there forever, but I’ve only recently noticed the street light. It’s practically invisible by day … something you’d never look twice at. But, at night, when the darkness falls on Quogue like a heavy, impenetrably black quilt, it take on a wholly different form.

Maybe the light was only recently installed or repaired, but it now cuts through the dark in an assertive manner. When you pass by it, in the late evenings, from the many windows that face the street, it seems strangely magnified — a bright beacon in the gloom. When we turn off all the lights at the end of the night, the aura of the street light floods into the living room, and all eyes are drawn to it like insects to a flame.

On the one hand, we should appreciate the street light. My mom lives on an otherwise very dark, quiet strip, and it certainly provides enough illumination to allow for better vision in the dark. But, by the same token, there’s just something …. odd about it.

Like some sort of unblinking sentinel, it seems to be waiting for something. It’s like some persistent reminder of an unshared secret. Why is it …. there? Did someone ask for it? Did something happen here that warrants such a light? What has it seen?

What does it know?

When I open the front door at look at it in the dark, the shine it emits seems to jump back across the lawn again, not quite as brilliant as when viewed from inside our house. But it keeps its fixed gaze. What does it want?

Quogue isn’t a loud town. Sure, on certain summer nights, you’ll hear people having the odd backyard barbecue, or you’ll hear cars gunning their engines on nearby Montauk Highway, but it’s mostly quite tranquil. In the dead of night, you can hear the trains weave through the pine barrens north of the highway, blowing their ghostly whistles in the dark. But, most of the time, it’s whisper quiet.

As such, the slightest creak, snap or settling of the house can stir me from sleep. My daughter sleeps downstairs in her own room here, a luxury compared to the tiny room she shares with her little brother back in the city. Now a 16 year old, she’s less inclined to go to bed early, so I’ll frequently hear her puttering around in the kitchen or giggling as she texts with friends back home. I thought I’d heard her knock something over, the other night, which had me out of bed like a shot, and creeping down the stairs to discover her fast asleep and nothing out of place. That said, she’d left the kitchen light on. I flicked that off and went back towards the stairs in the living room.

I tried not to look at it, as I knew it would fire the usual synapses and get me thinking about it all over again, but the cold glow of the street light outside was visually inescapable. I could not look away.

It looked like a spotlight shining on a stage awaiting someone. I turned and adjourned upstairs again, unable to shake the feeling that one night, I’ll see someone standing, …. and waiting … under that light.

Big City Survey: Part One

I started composing this several weeks ago, gradually adding to it as time and inspiration allowed. This was all, of course, well before everything turned upside down.

As has been established, I am now outside of the city, isolating with my wife and kids out on Long Island, trying to stay sane and looking forward to better times and healthier circumstances. What things will be like when we all return to “normal” in the wake of this remains to be seen.

In the interim, this is part one of a list of about thirty questions. I only got through half of it. Look for the other half soon, and cite your own choices.

Favorite Building:
There are obviously loads to choose from, but I’m going to go with 644 Broadway at the northeast corner of Bleecker Street, known by some as Bleecker Tower. Completed in 1891, this former bank building is notable for its eye-catching red sandstone exterior, its Romanesque architectural flourishes and its metal tower, now greened with age like Lady Liberty herself. I’ve only ever set foot in it when its ground floor played host to a noxious clothiers whose name escapes me, but I was there in homage to a former incarnation of that space, the Blue Willow, and only then as said restaurant served as the location of the photo shoot the produced the cover shot of one of my favorite albums of all time, that being Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves by Gavin Friday & The Man Seezer.

Least Favorite Building:
There’s now several of them, sprouting up like fucking weeds, but the first so-called “supertall” I really latched my hatred onto was 432 Park Avenue, which thrusts out of midtown like a giant glass’n-steel penis, lording over its surroundings verily like Barad-dûr (look it up). I hate it. It’s an artless rod that plays host to impossibly wealthy oligarchs. It decimates the symmetry of the cityscape. Awful, repugnant shit. Knock it down.

Favorite Landmark:
There are several places that I believe ought to be “official” landmarks (i.e. legally protected) that aren’t. CBGB was one of them, but it’s way too late in the day to be boo-hooing that one. In terms of things that are still operational, visible and/or still standing, I’m quite partial to “the Alamo,” otherwise known “the Cube” at Astor Place, although I feel that’s kind of an obvious one. Glad it’s still there, though. Back uptown, I’ve always been fond of Louise Nevelson’s “Night Presence IV” sculpture on the island at East 92nd Street and Park Avenue. As a child, during snowstorms --- back when it still snowed in New York City – my friends and I would throw snowballs at it. The correct hit would make an endearing bonnnnnnnnnggggg sound.

Least Favorite Landmark:
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for that stupid bull downtown to fuck right off.

Favorite Local Sports Team:
I don’t have one, because I don’t give a crap about sports.

Favorite Museum:
As much as I grew up wandering the halls of the Metropolitan Museum and the Natural History Museum, I’m going to go with the dark horse and vote for the Museum of the City of New York over on upper Fifth Avenue. It’s amazing. 

Favorite Coffee:
For a start, I hate Starbucks for a number of reasons, but first and foremost, their coffee tastes burnt to me. Stop spending your money there. I’m also not what you’d call a coffee connoisseur. I’m not impressed by artisanal blends or bespoke roasts. Give me a generic, large cup of shitty coffee with milk and sugar, and I’m good to go. I get mine at either the Corner Gourmet on West Broadway & Murray Street or from an endearingly irritable Egyptian gentleman who operates a food cart at the bottom of Greenwich Avenue at Barclays Street.

Favorite Pizza:
Okay, now we’re getting into it. This is an incredibly divisive question, depending on who you ask. Personally speaking, I regret to say that most of the beloved pizzerias of my youth are now all gone. Time was when there were decent options for pizza on practically every other block, regardless of what part of town you were in. They weren’t necessarily top of the line, but joints like St. Marks Pizza on Third Avenue, The Pizza Box on Bleecker, Mimi’s on East 84th and Lexington, or Stromboli’s on University Place were all entirely respectable options for a good slice. And we’re talking slices, here, not sit-down joints – there IS a difference. We’re talking about quick food on the go, not full-on dining experiences. That should be a separate question. In any case, all those spots have vanished. In terms of a slice here in 2020, I’m likely to shoot for Joe’s Pizza just north of Carmine Street off Sixth Avenue, but they’ve been discovered and the lines are crazy now. I’m also fine with Champion Pizza in SoHo at Cleveland Place just north of Kenmare Street. In a pinch, I’ll settle with my local, that being Pizza Mercato on Waverly Place, but it’s very decidedly not my favorite. I could list loads of shitty pizzerias, but who’s well served by that? Also, if you spend your money in any of those 99 cents pizza holes or --- may God forgive you – procure your “pizza” from Domino’s, you should by gored by a disconsolate bull.

Favorite Diner:
Much like the pizzerias (and the record stores, and the book shops), the diners are swiftly vanishing. My local standbys like The University Restaurant on University Place and the Silver Spurs on Broadway are both long gone. My old favorite, The Mansion, on the corner of East 86th and York Avenue, is still there, I believe, but they had a re-modelling some time back that robbed some of its charm for me. The Three Guys Restaurant on the northeast corner of East 96th and Madison Avenue is exceptional. For aesthetics, the Square Diner inTriBeca (65 West Broadway) has all the old school charm you need, but if I’m being candid, my favorite is the Gee Whiz Diner on Greenwich Street at Warren Street. The burgers are what you’re after.

Favorite Italian Restaurant:
My family’s old favorite, Col Legno on East 9th Street, vanished eleven years ago, when owner Chris pulled up stakes and went to go work at a bar in the West Village. Since then, our favorite is really Da Andrea on West 13th between Fifth and Sixth Avenues (just across from the Quad Theater). It might not look like much from the outside, but it’s always hopping when we go, and the food is always amazing. Also don’t mind the oddly named Aunt Jake’s on West 8th Street.

Favorite Chinese Restaurant:
Well, since posting the last installment of the perpetually delayed Flaming Pablum Grub Guide, I did expand my horizons further when the wife and I took a shamlessly touristy culinary walking tour of Chinatown (which I cannot recommend enough). From that, we did glean some choice spots for Chinese cuisine of very specific types (i.e. a good place for dim sum, a great place for Peking Duck, a fab spot for dumplings, etc.), but in terms of an overarching eatery that covered all the bases, a visit this past January to Shun Lee West on the Upper West Side really checked all the boxes, …including my tireless demand for “big fuckoff dragons!”

Favorite Sushi Restaurant:
As cited here, my heart still belongs to Japonica.

Favorite Steakhouse:
I love all steak houses, from the charmingly grotty Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse on the Lower East Side through to the higher tiered places like Smith & Wollensky’s. Peter Luger’s out in Brooklyn used to be a big fave. I haven’t been in eons, but I’ve heard reports of diminishing returns in the quality department. Similarly, the last time I went to the Old Homestead over in the Meat Packing District, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the fare. While not solely a steakhouse, the longbone and the t-bone at our local, Knickerbocker’s on East 9th and University Place are both outstanding and highly recommended. If we’re talking super-dupe high-end, Father’s Day-type shit, I’m always down for a trip to Keen’s Chophouse on West 36th off Sixth Avenue. Tons of history and atmosphere, and the food is nothing short of fucking sensational.

Favorite Subway Line:
Hmm. Can’t say I have one. They all let me down, in the end. I suppose the N/R is the best for my purposes. I was born and raised – like Jennifer Lopez – on the 6, but cannot say I’m especially fond of it.

Okay, that's as far as I got. The next batch of questions concentrate on bookstores, bars, live music venues, parks and more, so stay tuned for that, although they'll all be answered through the prism of current experience, so will probably have a more melancholy, world-weary tone. Naturally.

Hope you're all hanging in there. Be safe & healthy.

Get Off My Lawn: A Playlist

I started writing this as a laboriously longer piece about, once upon a time, being the youngest person in an office environment — being called “kid,” and noted for my youthful, scrappy take on life. Gradually, that changed. I started working with people younger than me and blah blah blah.

I’m going to spare you from having to plow through several chunky paragraphs and needless, sepia-toned preamble and fast forward to 2020.

I now work with a gaggle of people from whom I am separated by a yawning generational chasm. Both them and myself regularly make pop-cultural allusions we each consider universally recognizable, but haven’t the foggiest clue what each other are talking about.

When it comes to music and the appreciation thereof, we are practically from different planets. For them, people like Britney Spears, Beyonce and Kanye West are like faces on Mount Rushmore, and late-90's hip-hop acts I'd considered derivative and redundant at the time are practically considered venerable oldies acts to them. We share virtually no common parlance in this realm. They have no clue (nor interest in) who, say, Lemmy, Adam Ant, Cop Shoot Cop (pictured above), GG Allin and/or Bob Mould are, and I have no clue (nor interest in) who SZA, 2 Chainz, Lil Uzi Vert and Earl Sweatshirt are. Andy Warhol’s banana from the sleeve of the debut album of The Velvet Underground and Peter Saville’s ubiquitous artwork from the sleeve of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures are just Urban Outfitter t-shirt designs to them. Likewise, iconography from their musical touchstones mean nothing to me.

I may have mentioned her before, but one young colleague of mine — Lyndsey — had a refreshing take on a New Year’s resolution. Instead of giving up something as some sort of penitent punishment, she got her herself a coffee-table book of allegedly canonical albums and planned to devote each month to listening to and immersing herself in a new (for her) record, thus broadening her knowledge and experience of this celebrated music. I thought — and still think — that was genuinely very cool.

She ended up sharing this exercise with our mutual colleague, Tegan, who sits in her adjacent cubicle. I’d walk by and hear comparatively incongruous music coming from their part of the office, like the Monkees, Iron Butterfly and Revolver by the Beatles. I started chatting with them about it, and we struck on a new idea.

Tegan made a primer Spotify playlist for me of music that she — being unfathomably younger than myself — considers worth knowing about and/or appreciating with regards to what’s happening for her generation. Similarly, I was tasked with making one for her and Lyndsey of the type of music that I am fond of.

So, yeah, if you think that explanation was long, you should have seen the one I scrapped. But it was just basically to tee up the playlist below. Now, while I don’t generally get my fingers dirty on Spotify — being no fan of streaming, I — this was for a good cause. Plus, it was fun.

Yes, it’s still missing a lot of crucial stuff, but should you care, … enjoy.

Might I suggest listening on "shuffle."

Status Report

I’ve been working remotely for about twelve days now, and we’ve been out here on Long Island for just over a week.

The work front is stressful, as it’s either deathly quiet or crazy busy.

When it’s the former, I worry that there won’t be enough to justify keeping on our full team’s headcount should things get lean, as has been happening elsewhere.

When it’s busy, it’s confounding, as accomplishing stuff between two laptops (one shitty Dell, one MacBook Air) isn’t yet intuitive. Tasks that normally take about five minutes become twenty-minute efforts, due to spotty WiFi, clunky processes and my own inefficiencies. I have faith it will get easier, but it’s frustrating.

The kids are restless and periodically cranky, but that’s all to be expected. Both have incremental homework to tackle, which they’ve been doing while the wife and I work.

The weather has been largely chilly and damp, which at least makes staying indoors and at home easier. My kids are itching to go to stores to buy junk food and such, but we’re trying to venture out as infrequently as possible. That's the idea, right?

Overall, though, we have nothing to complain about. We are all well. No one’s gotten sick, as yet.

How are you continuing to cope through all of this?

Persevering Through The Pandemic

I realize it's only been about a week since shit ramped up to the extent that turned our lives into a shitty disaster movie, but here are steps we're taking to make life bearable. What's working for you and yours?

Here's our list...

1. Walks, Walks and More Walks: Both as a family, and solo. Keep moving. Get outside. Stretch your legs. Get fresh air. Get a change of scenery. It's crucial. Just don't cough on anyone, and wash your damn hands when you get in.

2. Mandatory Book Club: For at least an hour, put down all digital devices and pick up a book — an actual book — and immerse yourself in it. I brought three books with me on this mission, which I plan to burn right through. Thankfully, there are plenty of books in this house to keep us occupied for a while.

3. Every Night is Game Night: Monopoly, despite being a guaranteed fight-starter, is always a good one. Last night Oliver and I played Scrabble. We have Risk, Chess, an old game called All The Kings Men, and technically we have Stratego, but several pieces are missing. Tonight, I believe, we’re playing Risk, although the wife is itching to indoctrinate the family into the faith of Bridge, a card game which I’ve never enjoyed. But, I’ll give in, I’m sure.

4. Let the Music Play:  Yes, it’s crazy important to keep apprised of the news, but after a while, it’s a real bummer. Diffuse your anxiety and lift your spirits with regular airings of your favorite music. I’ve been doing a lot of this, although it can be tough to find a selection the whole family enjoys. My youngest just voiced his opinion that he is not in favor of further Elvis Costello. A mix of Elton John, the other night, found my wife voting down several favorite tunes like “Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding.” It’s hard to please everyone, but keep at it. The only choice we've all agreed on, so far, is Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but I can tolerate only just so many spins of "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" before I go a bit mental.

5. Use the Kitchen: I can’t cook to save my life, but my wife and kids have been regularly experimenting with different dishes. Oliver wants to bake, while Charlotte is trying some “creamed coffee” recipe. Anything to stay busy, creative and distracted is a positive.

6. Honor the Fire: Sick of television? I can empathize. If you have access, a fire place can be just as soothingly hypnotic. Fire wood is a luxury, at this stage, but it’s very therapeutic, I’m finding. Also, it's a panacea for my inner pyromaniac.

The Deserter & The Deserted

Rat calling Sinking Ship, Rat calling Sinking Ship, … Come in Sinking Ship!!!

I remember when the darkness closed in after the lights suddenly went off during Hurricane Sandy, my family and our best friends/next-door neighbors hunkered down together that first night and made an evening out of it. The next day, however, they quietly crept out of their apartment and decamped to a spot they have upstate. Circumstances, obligations and limited resources forbade us from following suit, so we stayed put and rode the rest of the week out in the dark. In retrospect, we were mildly inconvenienced, whereas lots of folks in places like the Rockaways lost everything. We had nothing to complain about, other than ennui, really. We’ve joked about it since then, how our neighbors “jumped ship,” but who could blame them? They had a warm, lit house to escape to.

Upon the further spreading of the Trump Virus, we did the same this week, taking advantage of my family’s kind offer to escape the heavy case concentration in New York City (check out the map below, courtesy of this story in the New York Times). I’ve been called out by a couple of select readers on it, but y’know what? If you had the option to get your kids out of a tiny apartment to an (arguably) safer space, you’d do it, too. If you have cognitive difficulty processing the logic of that decision, I cannot help you.

Take even a cursory glance at the media source of your choice, these days, and you’ll doubtlessly see images of normally bustling city streets across the world transformed into vast, empty spaces, largely bereft of another human being. This doesn’t mean everyone’s taking the hint (witness the stubborn influx of party-determined spring breakers in Florida), but the smart ones are refraining from large gatherings. For it to genuinely work, I’d imagine everyone has to abide, but we’ll see, I guess, if the curve is indeed flattened.

In any case, speaking of bustling city streets, my friend Gregoire Alessandrini, who maintains the excellent photographic site, New York City in the 1990s, recently posted a cool new entry. Gregoire lives in Paris, these days, but returned to NYC last summer. Regrettably, we were not able to meet up, but he took the time to revisit some of the places he’d first documented decades ago. See those pictures here.

In the interim, please stay safe and sane and look out for each other. There’ll be more here soon.

Out Here

It seems that I have so much to say at this time, and certainly plenty of time to say it, but simply do not know where to begin.

As this week started to unfurl, my wife and I made the decision that —if at all possible — it would best for our family to get the Hell out of Dodge, so to speak, as the four of us jam-packed into our “junior four”-sized apartment (charitably described as “intimate”) was really going to take a toll should the shelter-in-place directive come down (which now seems imminent). As such, after the rigorous unspooling of red tape required to secure enough of my son’s meds for an extended period (way easier said than done), we decamped to Long Island to put some serious social distance between us and downtown Manhattan. We are currently squatting — as we do in the summers with generally far less drama — at my Mom’s place in Quogue. We feel cut off and summarily isolated, but are very grateful. My mother, meanwhile, is down in Florida, which while still not “safe” (nowhere is), is marginally better than being up here.

As a friend of mine suggested last week — a time period which already seems so comparatively fancy-free, in hindsight — the way this has all played out seems strangely akin to some of the videos of the tsunami of 2004. Contrary to popular perceptions of a what a tsunami is supposed to look like, the water didn’t arrive like a Godzilla-sized wave, but rather as simply a gradual increase of water. At first it seemed manageable, but then it kept rising, and rising, and rising, and rising…… and then took everything with it.

Again, so much has happened since last week, when I was wondering if certain events were still going ahead, it seems we — the giant, collective we — are looking at a total shut-down.

When will the coast be clear?

Stay safe. Stay smart. Wash your hands.

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