Yeah, New York really used to be like that...

I recently mentioned how every car in my 'hood on the upper west side used to have a sign in the window saying "NOTHING OF VALUE IN CAR!!", faithful readers may recall.
Well, I just heard a great story from a neighbor who also remembers those days. He told me that one day, walking out of his building, he saw a car with the aforementioned sign taped to the inside of the back window and the front window of the car smashed in. Lying on the front seat was a note, scrawled in big letters that said "GET SOMETHING!"
Those were the days my friend.
Fast forward to now: Mercedes SUV parked on 103rd near Bway with top-of-the-line Evenflo baby seat in full view in the back. Vehicle unmolested.

"Yeah, so I pitched for a few guys...so what?!,,,,"

With those deathless words, Jackie Riccardi burned his way into my synapses forevermore. I was 15 and he was about the same age. He had peach fuzz on his chin and rosy cheeks that looked almost comical in their wholesomeness but he possessed the voice of a hard-bitten streetwise, Bronx punk that sounded like someone who'd been gargling lye for longer than he'd been alive. I'm not exaggerating. If you closed your eyes and listend to this kid he sounded like a 45 year chainsmoking whiskey pounder. This was, no doubt, the result of his ingestion of Marlboro Reds, end to end, throughout the day. We were a couple of kids among a couple dozen that were in a drug rehab called Daytop Village on 83rd street between Columbus and Amsterdam.

My parents had given me a simple ultimatum: either get cleaned up or find another place to live. Being that I was 14 years old, I didn't really cotton to the prospect of finding a place on my own so I acceded and began attending. It was a day-care program in which attendance was required from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm daily, 10-3 on Saturdays and Sundays off. The truly hardcore (i.e. junkies of long standing) were sent to the program's upstate facilities in Millbrook, New York (there was another upstate one but I can't recall the location). The program in the city had quite a colorful crew, both staff and attendees. I recall a 15 year old gay hustler and a 42nd street prostitute named Yvonne who I later saw decked out like a garish vision of old New York, tottering across Broadway and 45th Street, complete with purple hot pants and a feather boa. Apparently she didn't get cured.
Just to show how different New York was then (I know people talk about this ad nauseam but it was truly a different world): on the first day that I was due at the program I lit up a big roach as I walked down Broadway at about 8 am. As I rounded the corner of 83rd street heading east and sucking mightily on the roach, lips pursed in an almost comic evocation of a potsmoker, a cop walked past me. We looked right at each other. He did nothing and continued on his way. Contrast that with today's New York when pissing discreetly behind a bush in Central Park can get you hauled in and you might get some idea of the stark difference between yesterday and today.

So back to Jackie Riccardi. Jackie had a serious tough guy persona. Although he was rosy cheeked and only 15, he did his best to impart a real "fuck you and your dead ancestors" kind of vibe. He was a hard-boiled little fuck from the Bronx and he wanted you to know it. So, when the counselors (reformed addicts themselves) and the inmates (not really, since we all went home every evening) gathered twice weekly for Encounter Groups, we were all encouraged to let loose all the frustration and hostility that we had hoarded over the course of dealing with one another civilly the rest of the time. In this one particular group, a couple of the counselors began hammering Jackie, telling him that his tough guy "I'll kick your ass" pose was a front and that it had to be a cover for something softer, something...gayer. They kept at him for over 15 minutes, "c'mon Jackie, you never made it with a guy? Who you kiddin'? Kah Maaaaahn man! Fess up!" etc etc. It was fascinating to watch because, while he denied it, he didn't get all upset or start hollering. He just was like, "Me? Get the fuck out of here." So imagine my surprise when, after relentless hectoring, he blurts out—to finally get them off his back—"All right! Okay! Yeah, so I pitched for a couple o' guys. So what?! That don't make me queer!" I was unacquainted with the whole "pitch" versus "catch" parlance but I caught on fast.
Here it was, in all its ancient glory—the notion that the penetrator, the actor (rather than the acted upon) remains sexually undefined by his act while the buggeree (or cocksucker) is an irredeemable fag. I came across this same idea just the other day while re-reading Thompson's "Hell's Angels" in which a touch, macho Angel recounts how a guy blew him in a bar and how he would have no problem getting sucked off for cash anytime there was someone willing to pay. But him gay? Naah.

Bristol's Baby Daddy OMFG!!

This is comic genius. If you haven't already seen/heard this you've got to check it out.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

George Carlin and the politics of discernment

I recently had the pleasure of being called an "elitist, liberal, snob" by an anonymous poster on Youtube. What had I done to inspire his ire? Very little. I had merely pointed out that, to appreciate George Carlin's humor, a certain level of intellect and discernment was a prerequisite. I have been a huge fan of Carlin since I was a child when his albums "FM/AM" and "Class Clown" spent an inordinate amount of time on the turntables of my youth. I parroted his bits ceaselessly and can, to this day, do many of them verbatim. I grew less enamored of his work in later years as he became something of a polemicist and his routines seemed to incorporate less humor and more attacks (many quite ugly) on admittedly deserving targets. Nevertheless, he was always fascinating to watch—a first rate, blindingly quick mind nimbly navigating the jagged face of his barbed opinions. In the wake of his death, in addition to replaying some of those albums, I went on Youtube to peruse some of his bits and enjoy a reprise of his brilliance. Posted underneath a wonderfully observed bit he did about death and the hackneyed, predictable responses that people have to it (If there's anything I can do, please let me know! Yeah? Okay, how about you paint the fucking garage and then mow the lawn? Hah? Call their fucking bluff!), some putz had posted, "Who is this old guy, he's not funny and why does anyone care?" I ought to have known better than to descend into the fetid sink that frequently passes for discourse on Youtube (and all too many places online) but I couldn't stop myself. I wrote: "Carlin often requires a certain level of discernment and intelligence to appreciate and is widely acknowledged as one of the great comic minds", which, considering the wit and insightfulness of his bit on death and the bald ignorance of the poster, seemed apt. In a very short time, someone responded to my posting, calling me "a typical liberal, elitist snob" or words to that effect. I found this striking because if an appreciation of insight and keen powers of observation is a hallmark of liberalism, then what are the hallmarks of the more right-leaning individual? Surely not only liberals and "progressives" can see that O'Reilly and Hannity and their ilk are bullies who engage in indictment by insinuation? Is it only liberals like me that find themselves becoming unaccountably violent and fantasizing about using Sean Hannity's lying fat head for a piñata when they see his smug, dissembling, propagandizing piehole spewing unattenuated garbage day after day? Is it only "liberals" who recognize that their mad-dog ravings cheapen our discourse even as they seduce the dull? MSNBC's sad attempt to counter Hannity and O'Reilly and their ilk with the likes of Keith Olbermann does nothing to elevate our profoundly debased level of discourse. You cannot beat these swine at their own game. Their hostility and bullying is a pose; one that obviously resonates with huge numbers of people who, I suspect, are unwilling to actually take the time to think. I am reminded of O'Reilly's appearance on Letterman in which he hectored Letterman and demanded that he answer the question: "Dave, do you want us to win in Iraq? It's a simple, yes or no question!" To which Letterman responded, "Well, it's not a simple question for me Bill, because I'm thoughtful". That was a beautiful moment and one that needs to be magnified a thousandfold.
  There are plentiful Ivy leaguers, PhDs and MBAs among the right-wing (Rice was a Stanford professor)—intellectualism is not the sole province of the left. But the appearance of strength finds its simplest expression in the anti-intellectualism that is the stock in trade of Hannity et al (taunting, bullying, hectoring) which a dishearteningly large number of people in the U.S. seem to connect with. It was great to see Obama on O'Reilly (I only watched a brief segment) and the firm way in which he refused to let O'Reilly play his standard game of essentially using a (usually more liberal) foil to bray his opinion. Obama was having none of it and politely yet firmly refused to allow himself to be interrupted and steamrolled by O'Reilly's usual tactics. O'Reilly, faced with Obama's stature as a presidential candidate (rather than his usual hapless, faceless victims...er...interviewees) and unimpeachable poise, couldn't play his usual game, though he tried.
  One of my closest friends is a hardcore right winger—thinks Giuliani is wonderful, lifetime member of the NRA, the whole bit. He also lives on the upper west side near 96th and Broadway. I frequently tease him and tell him that he's living in the belly of the beast. He laughs and says that he likes how liberals live. I think that, in some ways, he must share more liberal opinions than he's willing to let on or else he couldn't stomach living in such an unabashedly left-leaning place. When we're out with friends, I often say, "I don't want to say that Jimmy's right wing, but he thinks the Klan is soft on minorities". This usually gets a good laugh and smiling protestations from Jimmy who, for all his posturing, is one of the kindest, most supportive people that I know and possesses a genuinely warm heart. I'm sure there are many such conservatives. Why aren't any of them on television, propounding more considered and thoughtful views?

visit www.foxattacks.com for a fair and balanced view of Fox "News"'s propagandizing.

Marc Jacobs, Dean Street and my old roommate, part 1

I moved out of my parents' place when I was 18—it had been inevitable given the amount of weed I smoked, their dislike of it, and the entire trajectory of my life at that point. My friend Ralph introduced me to DJ, a 14 year-old drug dealer who lived on Dean Street in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. He had his own apartment with a single roommate, Jim. There was a tiny room—a glorified closet really—available and DJ rented it to me. Despite his tender age DJ had more of a five o'clock shadow than I did and he also had the low voice of a grown man. His stock in trade was very pure, liquid LSD that he sold in Visine bottles. He had a roaring business going. He cultivated his clientele by traveling around the country, following the Grateful Dead, and selling the acid at their shows. When he was in New York, he shipped his product all over the country by Fedex. I found his whole setup completely mind-boggling, particularly considering his age. The freezer in our apartment was stuffed with bags of sinsemilla buds and bottles of LSD disguised as Visine. It was in that apartment on Dean Street where I came to regard it as normal to drink Jack Daniels in the morning along with lungfuls of sweet, powerful, skunky bud. I was a bike messenger then, working for Streetwise Couriers in midtown. Legend had it that thugs staked out the stairs leading up to the walkway on the Brooklyn Bridge so I rode straight up Cadman Plaza onto the bridge with the cars. The roadway was a metal latticework that caused the bike to shimmy back and forth as though you were on ice. This took some getting used since cars were flying past at 50+ miles per hour with inches to spare and people often yelled and cursed as they flew past. The ascent was a little tough but once you hit the apex and began to descend you'd often keep pace or even pass the cars. It's hard to describe the sensation of flying through the air, high above the river, with Manhattan rushing at you as you scream down the Brooklyn Bridge on two wheels. It's nothing like the slow and polite promenade ride alongside the pedestrians on the walkway above the road.
In those days (pre fax and internet) the bike messenger companies were color-coded: Purple bags were Can Carriers which was the first company I rode for before I was told that Streewise (Orange) was much hipper to work for. They were, in fact, a way cooler outfit.
I discovered that by showing up early, bringing a freshly rolled joint and coffee for the dispatcher I was ensured choice and plentiful runs. Pickups at 430, 444, and 485 Madison all dropping off to the same location, for instance. Black bags were worn by Prometheus messengers, and yellow by Cycle Service who were on 6th Avenue somewhere near Spring Street. Red bags were carried by Mobile messengers. All (and I mean all) of the bags worn by messengers were made by an old Italian man, Frank de Martini, who operated out of a basement shop at 77 Mott Street in a space he shared with a Chinese sprout growing operation. He charged $40 for his bags and they were indestructible. He was also in the business of making canvas covers for boats. His bags were made of heavy-duty canvas (in the aforementioned colors) lined with bright yellow vinyl. There were two straps with buckles and a strip of Velcro under the flap. While they were compact and light, you could fit a truly incredible amount of stuff into these durable creations. Later, when I moved to San Francisco, I bought a dozen or so of the bags and tried to start a craze but didn't stick with it. A few short years later, every fucking body in every city nationwide has a messenger bag of one sort or another and Manhattan Portage and countless other companies crank them out. None of them come close, in durability or functionality to de Martini's creations. But I digress.
I was put in mind of those days when I read the profile of Marc Jacobs in the most recent issue of the New Yorker. To be continued...

Putz of the Day—an addendum

(see Putz of the Day posting)
My good friend Al, with whom I grew up on the UWS, pointed out that it is characteristically New York behavior to take offense at being offered unsolicited advice. This is absolutely true.
There was something quintessentially New York about the way this assbag marched off in a huff after I told him that his shit was at risk. Nonetheless, he was (and very likely is still) a putz for not having recognized that I, with the best of intentions, was attempting to save him from his own stupidity and it would not have killed him to say thank you when he admitted as much by locking up his front wheel after the fact.

Technorati here we come!

The shows ovah, nuthin' to see heah, keep it moving, keep it moving!

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President Fucking McCain

It is utterly mind-boggling that after the staggering litany of Republican failures over the past 8 years (Iraq, Afghanistan, not capturing bin Laden, Katrina, politically-motivated govt appointments, countenancing torture, lowering taxes in wartime, economic meltdown) that there could be a fart's chance in high wind of another Republican president but that appears to be exactly where we're heading. Why? It seems that the "Democrat Party" (as the Republican pejorative goes), and, more specifically, our boy (no Southern-fried insult intended) Barry, has not one whit of killer instinct. To wit: McCain is so filthy fucking rich that he can't even count his goddamned houses and Obama fails, FAILS, to take him to task for it in any meaningful way. Talk about a soft pitch! He could have had a Fucking Field Day with that gaffe!! These are the same Republicans that constantly paint the "Democrat Party" as the "liberal elite" who are oh-so-out-of-touch with the common man—never mind that most of their policies are designed to FUCK the common man while paying obeisance to the God, guts, and guns rhetoric that continues to resonate with the embittered God and gun-clinging masses. The right has a seemingly bottomless well of vitriol and umbrage, despite having been on top for 8 miserable years. Their pitbulls and harridans (read: Limbaugh, Coulter and Hannity, whose fat, lie-spewing head I would dearly love using for a piñata) continue to spout falsehoods and outrage despite the fact that their despicable team has been in power for the longest fucking 8 years of my politics-observing life. They are amazingly adept at portraying the right as victims despite the right's true position as egregious offenders and victimizers both. This election is the Democrats to lose and from the looks of things they are well on their way to doing so. Unfuckingbelievable.

Putz of the Day (a new feature)

The world is awash with putzes (a Yiddish term for dick but somewhat softer and generally meant to denote a buffoon or twit as opposed to dick which is a mite harsher). I happened to encounter one this evening outside of the wonderful Mexican spot on Amsterdam near my apartment. I'm leaning against a parking meter waiting for my to-go order when up rides dude, I'd say 35-40, paunchy and in shorts with a short greasy pony tail. Not the most attractive specimen and, as I was shortly to discover, with a personality to match. He chains his bike up to the lamppost and I notice that he has quick-release levers on both his wheels. Any streetwise NYC cyclist knows that quick release levers are an open invitation to having your wheels (or seat) stolen. Most New York-proofed bikes even have a short section of bike chain looped around the seat and the bike frame to foil any slimeballs that want to help themselves to your seat. So. Chuckles proceeds to lock his bike to the lamppost through the frame leaving both wheels vulnerable to theft. When he'd finished I said, "are you going to leave it like that?". "Like what?" says Genius. "Those wheels are quick release, anyone can help themselves if they want", I reply. "Well, I wasn't thinking about it until you decided to stress me out about it". At this point I'm realizing that I probably would have done him more good by stealing his fucking wheels and driving the lesson home rather than attempting to school this schlub in the ways of holding onto your shit in NYC. The crime rate is down but, Christ, there are still drug dealers on my block and where there's drug dealers (or just about anywhere, come to think of it), there's people looking for shit that ain't nailed down. Anyhoo. "Well, anything that's not secured will be taken" I said.
"Yeah, I grew up here" he says, marching his pudgy ass into the restaurant. "Me too" I said, though it was hard to believe him given his open invitation to thieves. Less than 30 seconds later asswipe emerges, wordlessly removes the front wheel and re-threads the chain through the wheel and the frame. I watched silently, the muscles of my face palpitating violently as I struggled to maintain my composure and not crack wise. Shockingly, he did not thank me for saving him from his own stupidity, which he further underscored by leaving the rear wheel—more valuable because of the freewheel—unsecured. I thought about opening the rear quick release and pulling the wheel halfway out but I figured I'd let a genuine thief teach him an indelible lesson. You sir, are the Putz of the Day. Enjoy your brief reign before my inevitable next encounter with another Putz returns you to the faceless masses of slovenly cretins whose obliviousness and ingratitude cheapens all humanity.

Gene Simmons: Is there a bigger douchebag alive?

By pure happenstance I have been without a TV for roughly the past 2 years. By and large I find that life is rich and full without one. Once, walking along Haight Street in SF I saw a dead television propped in an open window at street level. On the screen in black electrician's tape were the words "Electronic Life Waster". That made a real impression. This past weekend, I was relaxing at LM's (who not only has a TV, but has cable) when I came across the eminently execrable and mildly entertaining Family Jewels program, featuring the above-referenced Douche of Douches. I have long loathed Kiss and its sub-par (and that's being generous) "rock". Everyone about them sucks: their songwriting, instrumental prowess, and lyrics are all shite of the first order. They have no groove whatsoever. I had the opportunity to validate this long-held opinion a few years back when I saw Kiss on a double bill with Aerosmith at the Forum in Inglewood. Aerosmith was everything that Kiss was not—tough swinging grooves and memorable songs performed with brio and panache. Kiss relied on fire-breathing, blood spitting and wires (for Simmons' demon to fly about) where their music was lacking (which is to say, in every conceivable respect). Kiss had all the rhythmic drive of toxic sludge, painfully oozing from a waste pipe and pooling, unwelcome, in my ear canal.
So there is Gene Simmons on the telly, seated at a restaurant with Bill Maher. When giving his order to the waitress he says, "I'll have the salad, and a lap dance". The waitress, who would have been within her rights to both slap him and report him to management for ejection, good-naturedly says something like, "I can't help you with that last one". This deeply shallow man, who, time and again trumpets his mantra that money is all that interests him, lacks the most basic instinct to treat women—not women that have signed up for leering or wholesale shtupping like his extensively inventoried groupies but a strange woman whom he encounters in public— with even a modicum of basic respect.
All the money in the world has not bought this prick talent, graciousness, or respect for those without his money and the standing and impunity that it buys him. What a fucknode.
And What the FUCK is that dessicated weasel that he has draped over his obviously bald pate?! You would think that all that money could buy him a more convincing hairpiece (or better stylist).
Van Gogh wasn't acknowledged as a great artist while he was alive. One can only hope that the same principle holds in reverse for Simmons and his trail of dross.

William Burroughs and (semi) lost New York City

Returning to New York City after years on the West Coast is akin to returning to a theater seat after a long intermission. The set has changed dramatically and many of the characters have changed or departed the scene altogether. The New York that I left featured hand scrawled signs in the windows of nearly every single parked car reading, Nothing of Value in Car!! As little as a roll of paper towels in view was enough to inspire a crackhead to smash your car window. These days I often see unmolested Mercedes SUVs with fancy child seats left inside in plain view. Back then (70s, 80s and some of the 90s too) iPods would have been unthinkable. A pricey little chochke that renders its wearers unable to hear the stealthy approach of someone creeping up on them? Never happen. If the iPod had come about in those days the number of concussed rubes wailing about being mugged would have been uncountable and unbearable. These days your concussion is more likely to result from being stumbled into by someone paying closer attention to their texting than to where they are going.
One of the marks of a great artist is an ability to make manifest the ineffable feelings that comprise our emotional landscape. I grew up on West 103rd Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side, a street that William Burroughs describes at some length in his classic Junky. I found that he had, with preternatural acuity, given voice to many of the sensations that I experienced time and again as I traversed the area around 103rd Street and Broadway as a boy and a young man:

"103rd and Broadway looks like any Broadway block.
A cafeteria, a movie, stores. In the middle of Broadway is an island with some grass and benches placed at intervals.
103rd is a subway stop, a crowded block. This is junk territory.
Junk haunts the cafeteria, roams up and down the block, sometimes half-crossing Broadway to rest on one of the island benches. A ghost in daylight on a crowded street."

A few paragraphs later:

"There are no more junkies at 103rd and Broadway waiting for the connection.
The connection has gone somewhere else. But the feel of junk is still there. It hits you at the corner, follows you along the block, then falls away like a discouraged panhandler as you walk on."

The cafeteria to which he refers was the Horn & Hardart on 104th and Broadway, just north of the Edison Theater (for a brief history go here: http://cinematreasures.org/theater/6193/) . The subway had a beautiful gothic entrance on the island in the middle of Broadway, since torn down (go to 72nd and Broadway to see a similar one). There was a burger joint called the Red Chimney on the southwest corner of 103rd that made fantastic char-grilled burgers. Just south of it was an old time candy shop run by an old man with an impenetrable old world (German?) accent. South of the candy shop was the Great Shanghai Chinese restaurant and the Daitch Shopwell supermarket. The Red Chimney was in a building (still) called the Marseilles, a glorious building that, at the time, was one of the worst SROs (single room occupancy) in the area; a building from which bodies, prematurely dead, emerged on stretchers with monotonous regularity. There are still a handful of SROs left (Hunters Moon on Broadway south of 99th is one but the neighborhood used to be lousy with them.
Today, there is a Starbucks on the southeast corner of 103rd and Broadway and a Subway on the southwest corner. The stretch of West 103rd Street between Broadway and Amsterdam was incredibly seedy when I was growing up. The north east corner building (now Columbia faculty housing) was a taxpayer with small shops at the street level and the Edison Theater fronting Broadway. There was a liquor store and Chinese laundry in the middle of the block on the north side. The liquor store had a sign saying "we don't serve alcoholics". As a child it was the first time I encountered the word. Junky was published in 1953 and my first memories of 103rd and Broadway are from roughly 10 years hence, but "the feel of junk" that he describes was most certainly still in evidence. Apparently it takes a lot to wash it away.
(beautiful day out, time for a bike ride...more later)

Highway 61 re revisited

There was really no excuse for me, a blues lover from waaay back, not having known that Highway 61 is the main highway running south from Memphis through the heart of the Mississippi Delta, but I didn't. Twin catalysts of longtime curiosity and a show by the Hives at a tiny bar in Oxford moved me to head south over Memorial Day of last year. That was when Dylan's album title and the mysterious geographic mother lode of the blues came together.
You can find a nice little photo essay of my trip here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/deedubnyc/sets/72157600306978872/

a bloodless Radiohead

Saw Radiohead in Camden the other night. Camden is a quaint little burg right across the river from Philly; quite scenic and worth a stop for a cappuccino on your next trip in that direction. I was struck by how mannered their stage show seemed. I've been following Thom and Co since "Creep" hit back in '94 and I've always loved the band and have all their albums. They essentially recreate their studio recordings live (which is hugely impressive and makes me think that those amazing records, with all of those great soundscapes and complex arrangements are probably performed live in the recording studio). In Rainbows is a masterpiece and the performances of "Nude" and especially "Videotape" (I can't listen to that song without bawling) were phenomenal. All of that notwithstanding, the show left me a bit cold. I can't help but wonder if it's not because I saw Iggy and the Stooges just recently and the gut-spilling anarchic raw power of that show was so blinding in comparison. The Stooges were really tight and well-rehearsed but as a performance there was something about it that was hugely compelling. Radiohead, with their gorgeous light show and impeccable recreations of their recorded material somehow seemed...a bit distant.

"the annals of weaseldom"—excoriation perfected

Between Gail Collins and Maureen Dowd (their acidic turns of phrase doubtless fueled by the subject matter of male infidelity), I doubt if anyone could have more perfectly nailed the execrable John Edwards to the cross better. In NYT of 8/9, Collins writes that his behavior represents "a new high in the annals of weaseldom" while in her 8/10 column, Dowd notes that his infidelity was "oncologically correct" coming as it did after his wife's cancer had gone into remission and before it had returned. Their two columns summed up all the ugliness of the events and homed in on their target with richly deserved opprobrium.

Don't blame it on New York, it's YOU!

Why do people behave like assholes and then use the fact that they are in New York city as a justification for their cretinous behavior? This pattern is widespread and I've experienced it several times. Case in point: I was at Big Nick's sidewalk café on Bway (the perfect summer hang) with my pal J and this douchebag is sitting at a table behind us braying into his cellphone at such high volume that, sitting close to each other at a small table, J and I were having trouble hearing each other. After he repeatedly ignored our polite gestures to lower his voice, I finally (after over 10 minutes of tolerating his inane palaver) leaned on his table with one elbow and, glaring with my nose about 3 inches from his, told him that he was insanely annoying and that it was impossible to hear my buddy who was about 2 feet away on account of his unattenuated prattle. He threw up his arms and said, "Aw c'mon man! It's New York!" Right, it's not YOU that's mindlessly shouting into your cellphone, oblivious, it's New York. I honestly came this close to grabbing this little prick's cellphone and hurling it into the street. That would've been great. "You want New York? Okay, how's this asshole?!" He (finally) got the hint and vacated. If you're gonna be an douche, just own it and leave New York out of it.

Iggy and The Stooges at Terminal 5—THIS FUCKER IS 60+!!

Went to Terminal 5 last night with LM to see The Man and had the joy of having my brain turned to jelly by the reconstituted Stooges (more than ably aided and abetted by the rockin' Mike Watt on thudstaff). To say that Iggy Pop is a force of nature is to give nature short shrift. The mad dervish is captivation incarnate and his voice sounds totally fantastic. The first Iggy show I witnessed was mid-80s in Oakland where he opened for the Pretenders who were riding high on a hit album at the time. The first thing Chrissie did upon taking the stage was to get down on all fours and kiss the floor saying, "I want to kiss the stage that Iggy Pop just performed on." She knows whereof she speaks. Ig's legend is amply justified; at 60 his intensity dwarfs that of front men less than 1/3 his age. Completely and utterly spellbinding. I can't imagine that this show was any less intense than a Stooges show during their first go-round. It was that good. From the top of the set and for the next 75 minutes he gave everything and then some. Watt stood right in front of his amp, legs splayed, pumping it out with relentless drive. My friend Vince Meghrouni has played drums on Watt's own tours and Watt holds Iggy in the highest rock regard so for him to be touring with Iggy, well...he's gotta be pinching himself every day. I noticed that when Iggy walked (which wasn't often) that he had a bit of a limp. LM said, "Yeah, if you had a swayback like that for 60 years you'd be limping too." She had expected to be underwhelmed. "Iggy Pop, really? I'm surprised you wanted to see this show." As we walked out onto 56th street with "I Wanna Be Your Dog" ringing in our ears (they did it twice for some reason) she was grinning from ear to ear and saying, over and over, what an amazing time she had had. Fuckin' Iggy, it doesn't get any better. The only band I've seen that comes close is the Hives—Howlin' Pelle will probably be just as great in 40 years.