Indictments and Pure Class

It doesn't take a genius to realize -- nor should acknowledgement be particularly "grudging" in this regard -- that "rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted" corruption, graft, cheating and subterfuge triumph in sports.

From the littlest league to the global arena, the only real competitions are those waged trying to game the system ... and usually, these plays are not televised.

Nobody has broadcast rights, exclusive or otherwise, to the internecine maneuverings and greed-fueled strategies of the Mad Men-style executives posing as "chairmen" ... "commissioners" ... "coaches" and "athletes" ... of sundry "leagues" across every country.

It's business.  As usual, behind closed doors ...

It's nobody's business when all goes well.  When teams are winning and revenue's flowing, like Krug or the summer dresses of models, the Players (with a capital 'P') -- those chairmen, commissioners, coaches and athletes -- reap benefits worthy of high stakes "winning".

When one cog in this wheel, though, "forgets" to file his tax returns ... or a codger, seemingly divorced from reality -- running around with his visor-wearing younger "girlfriend", much to the chagrin and mortification, but ultimately, vindication, of his wife -- pops off ...

and the world, in its self-righteous Schadenfreude, piles on ... there is no surcease from hell raining down!

Along similar lines -- the rarefied worlds of loose money, fast women and scheming sports / business moves churning away behind closed, global doors (and colorful visors) --

a dear friend of mine was impolitely asked to leave the 6th Annual Better World Awards in Monte Carlo a few weeks ago.

A quite noble endeavor (according to its website), the BWA "salute(s) philanthropic prominent celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs and corporations who are making the world a better place."

My friend is a journalist -- who will eventually tell this story, much better than I -- and was invited to participate in covering the BWA from their little "red carpet" on May 16, 2015.  Smack in the middle of the much larger, far more accessible and Press-friendly Cannes Film Festival -- but not seeming to give a shit about its 'second class' status on the Cote d'Azur during the third week in May -- the Better World Awards proceeded apace ... this year to a largely empty house, and virtually zero "star power".

The lovely Eva Longoria did show up (as did Guy in the Plaid Pants), to accept her Global Philanthropist of the Year award - following in the footsteps of previous Better World Award winners and honorees including Boris Becker and Julian Lennon.

My friend, though, the reporter, for reasons still not entirely (made) clear, was asked to leave, and through the back door, by International Luxury Media, the company that organizes this lofty annual event.

I was not there, and am simply responding based on what I've been told by several sources who were ... but by all accounts, there transpired quite a disgusting public display by the ILM CEO, and my stunned friend (and writing colleague) was shown the back door.

So far, that's all I know.  More will be written about this grotesque kerfuffle ...

In the meantime, I'll try and

keep things classy.

Obnoxious

For most of my adult life, since first being subjected to, quite literally, 'music free commercial marathons' on New York City radio in the late 1980s, I've opted out as a radio listener.

To me, there is nothing -- no thing -- more grating, like nails on a chalkboard or through the skull, than a shouting, hyped-up radio ad.  Annoyingly crass, too often unfunny, always talking too fast and demanding I hear ... There has been, and remains, no single thing that will make me move quicker to turn off or unplug an inaminate object, than an obnoxious and overlong music- and energy-sucking commercial on non-public radio.

Inasmuch, society's "hits" have never meant anything to me.  I couldn't say thirty years ago what you, as a kid, were 'dancing' to; I certainly can't tell you now.

Wait, that's untrue.  In fact, I'm "hipper" today ... better informed musically, from a societal (or "Top 40") perspective, than I was in that era when U2, Whitney Houston, Roxette and Lisa Lisa -- and Crazy Eddie -- all shared the airwaves and vied for attention.

This, of course, has as much to do with social media, as it does the little "rugrat" vying for my attention (guilelessly bopping now to One Republic :) ... not only the Internet, but the prevalence of Things.  Music -- news, weather, awareness in general -- seep in today, more than they ever were able to.

Today then, is a forced content (non-"on demand"), overly ad-serving platform like radio even necessary?

Along these lines ... Should anybody really be surprised about Beck winning Grammys in 2015?  Be asking, even jokily -- like Kanye stalking forth to claim "his" prize (for Beyonce!) -- "Who the fuck is Beck?"?

You know who Beck is!  Even you, little "Rugrat" ... Inconceivable back when Beck was 'losing', you're old enough now for 'lost' worlds to seep in ... You should add a Republic!  A Direction or two!  Become multi- ... Span generations.  Expand.

And above all, learn ...

to respect artistry.

Über ...

In the gross, crass world we've all become ... of "reality" monsters, Frankenstein face-making, Facebook perversions of expectations -- to be private; to be left alone, not to be "poked"; to exist without "proof" - by (over)sharing or "checking in" -- 

our unprivate, unreal world of "belonging":  of "registering", "joining", being forced to "sign in" ... Of psychotics and legal drug pushing, abuse ... Of oversex; joky promotions of gluttony ... Clashing beliefs about health, diet, wellness ...

It's a miracle any of us functions normally.

What is even "normal" anymore?  There are three (3) sexes now:  two genders and a "neutral" ... and we're asked to select one when giving birth.  We've become science fiction.  Test tube animals.  Experiments.  Targets, in both the traditional and ad-"serving" sense.

We fight back hysterically ... pinching ourselves ... Histrionically flailing for affirmation; some foothold to keep us from being subsumed ...

Yet don't get me wrong.  I haven't entered Nietszche mode ... Man, Woman, Brucekind has my respect.  My utmost support and best, fervent hopes.  And if you're in on the joke our new world has become, I want to tear that shit up!! why, I respect you that much more ...

Nietziche, y'all!

Riddle Me This

Recent input (from me) on a social network:

What fascinates me about social media is the psychological aspect.
 
What is/are the reason(s) behind the loneliness ... the histrionics ... the sad, almost desperate need for attention? The delusional hope -- or worse, the belief -- that every thought or "tweet" we make is somehow necessary/interesting?
 
That we have, and are supposed to have, "fans" - literal strangers, for whom we preen and pout and smile in "selfies" ... so that we might be "liked".
 
When did we become so sick?  What void does social media fill?
 
Were lives of people always so empty ... lacking as well in the not so distant past, the milennial capacity we now have to "share"?
 
Or do we exist today in a permanent, new "normal" state of mental illness?

Try Logging Off This Holiday Season ... It'll Be OKAY!

 Really.

Turkey Times

"(I)t's not pigmentation: it's a mentality and it's either going to work for you or it's going to work against you" 
[italics added] - Pharrell Williams

On Monday night, the week of Thanksgiving 2014, America was praying to be thankful for justice in Ferguson, Missouri.  With the fair and legally rendered decision not to indict Michael Brown's killer, a police officer reacting to public nuisance, if not threat, but then tragically incited to kill in that line of duty ... justice was rendered.

Fairly.  Legally.

The Grand Jury assembled in Clayton, Missouri -- to its immense credit and credit to all law-abiding communities of St. Loius County (and everywhere, for that matter) -- was able to separate fact from folklore ... actual circumstances from a breathless and toxic (social) media-whipped frenzy ... real life from hysterics and virulent fear(mongering).

Truth from hatred ... legal from racial ... common sense, in the end, from flawed logic and threats.

Here we go again in America!  Black against ... oh.

The truth is, this issue was never "racial".  It was intrinsically a matter of law and order, as endeavored to be enforced throughout the world:  Someone was causing trouble, someone called the police, the police showed up.

That the alleged troublemaker in this case happened to be black and his killer, the police officer, white, became relevant only when Michael Brown became killed by Darren Wilson.  Officer Wilson did not put on his badge that morning looking to kill someone (of any color).  He did not fire nervously, blindly without provocation.  This was no tragic "accident".  But it was also not an intended outcome.

As supported by evidence duly considered, Officer Wilson was doing his job:  first responding to a community's call ... then sidetracked by a threat, purportedly escalating beyond "perceived".

In America, the ability to see things as they are is no more.  It has been annilihated by an overreliance on lazy voyeurism and a nasty, judgmental susceptibility to (social) media manipulation.

Too often in America -- the Ferguson Grand Jury being a recent, and fortunately high profile, exception -- guilt, liability, blame and every worst-case scenario or behavioral motive is what's presumed ... not innocence first.

No, never that.

Bill Cosby, for example ... is a rapist now.  He IS a rapist, according to the prevailing winds of America's consciousness.  And whether or not the individuals, all pointedly with "nothing to gain" (except headlines and bylines, of course, and their names online, and/or a little more fame squeezed out of quarter hours) are corroborating in "exposing" a new flavor of Cosby ... A new "truth" wills out:  "Bill Cosby" no longer associated with Fat Albert, Temple University, Philadelphia, Jell-O, Dad sweaters, the '70s, the '80s, Saturday morning cartoons or Cliff Huxtable.

No, the New Cos is a "serial rapist" in the minds of millions ... likely now to be remembered that way, and associated these days with Spanish Fly.

... And bizarrely, curry.

'Man, I don't even like curry … ‘

Today, something like this gets taken seriously, at face value, with not even one person pointing out the context ... and that maybe, just maybe, a story about female David Letterman interns being "forced" to watch Bill Cosby eat curry backstage (lol?), no one saying a word ...

just might be a put-on.

Just saying.

Of course, rape is not funny.  The allegations against Bill Cosby are serious ... and may in fact not be just another day in the bullying internet's mob mentality.

Racism is also not a joke.  Nor killing.  Nor racial (incitement to) violence ... nor the perpetuation of inequality through misinformation, opinion overriding fact and loud and "viral" calls to arms.

"A riot is the language of the unheard.  Riots are self-defeating and socially destructive." 

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cos and Effect

Bill Cosby knew ...

Back in the day, on early stages, he would regale groovy audiences with tales of making girls like "Crazy Mary" go, "lhaaaahhhh", by slipping them some Spanish Fly.

Psychologically speaking, in that 3-minute comedy bit, are an analyst's wet dream ... a cornucopia of clues to the planting of seeds, and behaviors formed.

(He) has done this before.  In the past, he has probably even got some; like a dog that's been trained, poor cat just keeps on sniffing ...

No one else back then, back in the "innocent" yet heady days of drug overuse and casual sex, and the anecdotal public airings of pecadilloes by certain "underground", counter-culture and/or simply "Youth", as opposed to "Establishment" (established), voices ... was doing bits about Spanish Fly:  an alleged aphrodisiac, ancient Molly, if you will, which used to be advertised in the back of the "men's magazines" I would furtively jerk to ... but sadly, can actually lead to meloid poisoning, among other unpleasantness, in both women and men.

Still, some twenty years after the routine debuted, there was Bill Cosby again, baring soul and airing laundry, in the guise of publicity for his 1991 book, "Childhood".  Transcript from an interview with Larry King:

BILL COSBY: Spanish Fly was the thing that all boys from age 11 on up to death — We will still be searching for Spanish Fly.

LARRY KING: [laughs] That’s right.

COSBY: And what was the old- The old story was, if you took a little drop — It was on the head of a-

KING: Pin.

COSBY: -pin! And you put it in a drink-

KING: That’s right. Drop it in her Coca-cola — It don’t matter.

COSBY: It doesn’t make any difference. And the girl would drink it and-

KING: And she’s yours (emphasis mine).

If liquor's indeed quicker, as I've sometimes known it is ...

Writers write about what they know.  The basis of comedy is reality; there's truth in humor.

Bill Cosby knew.  And maybe he's been trying to let us know ... about patterns established.

Behaviors formed.

Is it ... ?

Expressively (Irresponsibly) Yours

I don’t care if I have Ebola, I’m riding my damn bike. - "Kaci Hickox"

When I was back there in seminary school ... there was a guy who used to get bogged down in expressing himself.  Huge sports fan, he was also (like me) a theater geek - and (also like me) used to write and direct things, and strut around like Fellini.

But when it came to expressing himself in public, when not dismissively, almost disdainfully, breaking off sentences to snort in bemusement ... M.D. would flounder for words, often babbling, repeating himself.

To be clear (and fair to the guy), I also have trouble getting sentences spoken in public to make sense ... Sometimes, getting them out of my mouth is a challenge!  Being a writer, I tend to overthink speech:  when speaking, I sometimes wrestle with adjectives ... synonyms, adverbs, metaphors, "flow" ... the same way I do as I when I'm writing.

The difference is that writing, no one's listening to me.  The exercise is done in private, the sweat and the grunting remain offstage.  The only thing a reader "hears" of my written words and stories is the result, not the process.

When speaking, I can sound retarded.  Confused, marble-mouthed (... and I mean no offense whatsoever to people with marbles in their mouths!) ...

Anyway, M.D. from F.U., I suspect, used to struggle similarly.  A fellow wordsmith ... but he also used to get into these paroxysms of frustration over events that he felt he couldn't control.  There was Chernobyl ... Black Monday ... Tiananmen Square and the Hillsborough soccer disaster in England (probably the most frustrating of all to him ... big nutty sports fan that I knew him to be back then).

Then locally, on at least one occasion ... I remember him during a meeting of our relatively small theater department -- convened specifically to address something or other which mattered then -- and M.D. literally sputtering, repeating, "All of the ... BULLSHIT ... has to stop!  We can't continue with this ... BULLSHIT.

"I would just like all of the ... BULLSHIT ... to end!"

"What are you referring to?" he was patiently asked.

"Just ... BULSHIT!  I can't explain the ... BULLSHIT."

Our poet laureate emerged from that, somehow, with a new patina of respect ... as rather than being mocked, he received backslaps, handshakes and commiserations after the meeting ... not to mention going home with my girlfriend that night!

It dawned on me then that by speaking up, be(com)ing a voice, no matter how eloquent (or not) your message ... you will be heard.

Ode to a Self-Absorbed Medical Worker

I've also come to understand all too well the immediate power and limitless reach of the World Wide Web ... a potentially devastating power and overreach, which is only now beginning to be recognized and kept in check:  lids are being placed back on steaming kettles, masks ripped off and new gates erected ...  not at all "ending" Freedom of Speech, but rather, returning to civil discourse.

This is overdue.

So instead of weighing in more than I already have about the stricken "Hero" Without Sense, Dr. Craig Spencer, and pulling punches entirely on the obnoxious and causelessly rebellious Nurse Kaci Hickox, I'll instead put forth the proposition that Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass ...

Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass.

Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass.

... I CANNOT say Shoshana Roberts has a FINE ASS!!!!!!

B.M. and P.M.

"My pain may be the reason for somebody’s laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody’s pain." - Charlie Chaplin

I have nothing but respect for Monica Lewinsky.

As the World Wide Web's "Patient Zero", she has suffered... felt pain... Cried, and died inside daily.  She has waited for exactly the right time and place...

She has taken up arms against haters and hatred, and perfectly played now the cards she got dealt.

The standing ovation Monica Lewinsky received at the Forbes' 30 Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia... some empathy, finally... The (finally) respectful hearing of things from her perspective -- the listening, versus insulting of her -- was fifteen years or so overdue.

I remember a disturbingly blunt and offensively direct hit on the Lewinsky debacle's whistleblower, that pot-calling-the-kettle-black backstabber, Linda Tripp...

Perhaps not a beauty queen, Miss Tripp wound up on the cover of one of New York's beloved rags, either the News or the Post, under the coffee-spitting headline, "It's Getting Ugly!"

To me, it's always been those three words, coupled with the unflattering head shot of Linda Tripp chosen to be plastered there on that front page beneath them, which was responsible for birthing, nay, shitting out, the "internet era", and foreshadowing our Rudest Generation to come.

The gum-smacking wisecrack of that tabloid headline -- the bestial boyish New Yorkese, at the public expense of a then unmarried, middle aged, childless woman, though somebody's daughter -- I will never forget;

the cheap, easy laugh I admittedly shared (hot coffee snorting out of both nostrils) with millions on that New York City, '90s morning never did sit well... and now, fifteen years later, looking back over the world's "timeline" since then -- of cruelty and inane and desperate cries for attention, feeding (or fed by?) a nation's cracked psyche -- the Before and After demarcation has not been more clear to me.

Never mind September 11th.  Simply (perhaps simplistically) put, the breakpoint in recent history, in my recent memory, is Before Monica (B.M.), when there were discretion, decorum and manners still; and Post Monica (P.M.), when name-calling, trash-talking, hating (and/or Yelping) anonymously, buffoon inappropriateness and lazy discrediting became society's norms - and somehow, OKAY.

The world turns, though.  What goes around...

Today, more than fifteen years P.M., I'm no longer the only one publicly decrying an epidemic of Asshole.  Nor am I alone anymore in my appreciation of Monica Lewinsky, and tacit acknowledgment of our P.M. world's penchant for piling on and bullying, wolf pack overkill.

* * *

* *

the Tyler Clementi Foundation to stop online bullying.

the Amanda Todd Legacy Society Ryan's Story

*

think

The Image Game

on WordPress turns One

Early this year, I said Goodbye to the "Lo-Fi Project":  a year-long adventure in cell phone photography, playing around with different devices and moods.

My 'weapon of choice' in this regard has been, and still is, my trusty (and crusty) old Blackberry Bold.  This vaguely paperweighty object, despite needing an extra wide "extended" battery (held to the back of the device with black gaff tape), and having been dropped, and other things -- kicked, flushed, fogged, moistened, over and undercharged) dozens of times -- remains my baby.  Like the 35mm "moojy" it replaced, I rocked 'Triple B' until she bled from exhaustion:

Good pictures, great ones, a whole lotta crap ... Just like loving moments in a human relationship.  Sure, me and Triple B struggled sometimes; but in the end, we knew and felt each other ... had each other's backs, and were always up for a little action ;) ;) ;) ;-) !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, I've spent the past year or so flirting and dancing (deep-throating) with Google, trying to make my cream rise online ... and have more or less succeeded, with the help of phoneography ...

I have long been interested in visuality.  I appreciate architecture, composition ... perspective intrigues me ... I have studied photography, and been snapping and 'scrapbooking' photos for decades.   At first, I was appalled at the integration of optic and communication technology:  the first cell phone/camera combination repelled me, not only on a 'purist' (though decidedly amateur) photographer level, but on the obvious basis of privacy, also.

Ten years or so later, with privacy teetering on the brink of extinction ... Miley Cyrus now, somehow, exhibiting "artwork" ... and our collective threshold for shame and embarassment lowered, if not erased completely, by crass "reality" with no one caring ...

I see no reason not to play.

"Fat Unicorn"

Photo(s) by

Jeff Glovsky

America's Psycho

 "(R)est assured this will all happen again very soon" - Michael Moore

With the latest act of fatal violence -- the shooting death of, now, four people in the Jewish Museum of Brussels last weekend -- thoughts turn again, or should, to the state of global mental health.

No, Elliot Rodger was not the latest ... He won't be the last.  As America weeps again, and wonders what went wrong again, and clams up for a change this time, on anything having to do with the Second Amendment -- even Michael Moore clammed up, not deigning to repeat his message of over ten years ago, in Bowling for Columbine -- we are only beginning to skate around the tip of what is actually the iceberg ...

Elliot Rodger was a sick, pained soul.  Stereotypically "tortured", almost "poetic", in his musings.  His dark manifesto, had it been written, say, a century and a half ago ... penned anonymously, and/or "discovered" ... who knows?  Might have become a literary classic, in the Dostoevsky or Knut Hamsen vein.

As a writer, I myself am tortured:  panged with jealousy, twisted, unnerved, by the guy's naive, sadly wasted talent!

... Creepy or not, in this respect, Mahbod Moghadam may have been spot on:  Elliot Rodger was (could've been) a beautiful "writer".  Frankly, we're lucky that he vented regularly ... safely, behind a pen and a keyboard, letting off many pages, and scripted videos, of steam.  Had he not afforded himself of these outlets, one has to wonder how much sooner his deranged fiction -- all those perceived slights, and delusions of some sort of "magnificence" -- might have occurred.

In any case, like all good American Psychos, Rodger pulled the trigger on himself in the end.

The Belgian killer -- the killer of Semites -- is still out there.  It's been suggested that this was a "professional" job, not in fact a random racial incident; and certainly, if the gunman in this case was some sort of targeted score settler, not particularly an issue of mental health.

So we'll leave that one for now.  Re-shine the spotlight on America.  Ask, WHAT are the stresses, the frustrations, the root causes of our epidemic?  Is it drugs?  The prescriptions we're hawked on TV each night?  The force-feeding of chemicals into the brains of our "hyper", attention deprived young children?

The constant -- CONSTANT -- barrage of "news" and useless "infotainment"?  The lack of exercise or (physical) play?  The deadly food options?  The lazy dependence on electronic voices telling us which way to turn?  The "deposits" required, the payment methods demanded, the increasing requirement of usernames and passwords ... the need to "opt-out", instead of being asked to opt IN?

Is it the frustration of trying to reach another human being on the telephone, or increasingly, in real life ... in actual face time, not via some "app"?  WHAT is driving us crazy here??

WHY are we Americans psycho?

It's not about access to guns, necessarily.  In a way, the NRA song and dance is true:  Guns don't kill people.  It's the people who have intent to kill ... Too often, like Elliot Rodger, flailing towards whichever weapon of choice comes in handy:  a knife ... a BMW ...

Guns or no guns, the Elliot Rodger story would've ended badly;

sadly, the American climate's too ripe for a sequel.

Why are we Batshit in America?

 

Horse Jocularity

Six T Six

馬年

Dead Letter Days (JL, JFK)

Recently the world (or the U.S., anyway) "celebrated" the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

"I am a jelly donut!" I toasted at one point during the November 22nd weekend ... not only refusing to "celebrate" death -- as we all tend to do, versus wallowing in it -- but also trying to be vaguely amusing while alluding to the wince-making "jelly doughnut misconception" which prevails, half a century later, in pieces of Germany.

Back in New York, there is today the annual celebration of a local, as much as a global, icon.  December 8th, 2013 "celebrates" the 33rd anniversary of the death of John Lennon.

While I missed having a memorable "Where were you when....?" JFK moment, I was alive, and do know where I was and what I was doing, when 'I heard the news that day (oh boy)' regarding JL.

I was watching a little football on Monday night ... which in 1980, was a treat.  Game days then were reserved for the weekend.  Football on Monday (plus at night!) meant I was going to be staying up 'late' -- usually well beyond my (unenforced) pre-teen "bedtime" of 10:30 -- and laughing with my parents at Howard Cosell.  This particular Monday night was no different.

Until, watching the Dolphins take on (and ultimately take) the Patriots, the blustering buffoon that comprised the persona -- the "Howard Cosell" (in quotes) brand, if you will -- became suddenly real.  Twice announcing that Lennon had been shot and killed, referring to it on-air as the "unspeakable tragedy" that it was ... and perhaps most sincere and heartfelt of all, reminding millions of us tuning in that night that in the Big Picture, what we were watching, what he was announcing, was "just a football game" ... Howard Cosell put the Big Picture back in perspective.

To be honest, my actual memory of Cosell's announcement is fuzzy.  I think I was in the bathroom ... or in the refrigerator ... or maybe I'd gone to bed already.  But the 'John Lennon dead' part ... 'John Lennon shot and killed' ... is the part that registered.  I remember then actually asking my parents, "Was John Lennon in the Beatles?" ... sort of confirming things for myself ... processing the weird and terrible news, delivered out of context that Monday night on a football broadcast, by a cartoonish sports icon who was clearly moved, clearly stunned ... a bereft and grieving fan himself.

There followed fifteen years or so of John Lennon being not only my 'favorite Beatle', but also sad, often inappropriate efforts on my part to infuse his spirit and a few of his reportedly defining qualities -- the cynicism, the sense of humor, a dry, often devastating wit and sharp tongue -- into my own thing ... whatever that was or I believed it to be.  I didn't outgrow my "John Lennon Phase" until I met and bedded Yoko Ono in the '90s.

Just kidding.

I still haven't outgrown John Lennon ... and of course, me and Yoko ... Well, that should go without saying (though just in case, I was JOKING:  I have never "bedded" Yoko Ono!!).

ANYWAY, Sachs Media Group recently offered what it thought would be a few music icons had they lived to see, and be seen, today:  Kurt Cobain, for example (of course he'd still be wearing flannel ... with his hair unwashed since '91!), and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson (who of course, would be wearing a Hawaiian beach shirt ... Really?).

While some of the 'aged rock star' images are laughable (especially Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas ... What the FUCK??? :), the projection of John Lennon, had he lived to become 73 years old, I think could not be more perfect:

It's exactly how I would 'imagine' the guy now.  Good work on that one, SMG!

And RIP JL / JFK.

Freundlichkeit (Human) Kindness

"(L)ife in itself is a chain of rainy days ... I think I'll go for a walk with my umbrella" - Sun-Young Park

'Kickin' it old school', as the kids say ... pen and an actual notebook, loaded with paper, not apps and icons, in hand ...

There's something to be said for people-watching -- Leute beobachten (or Schadenfreude, as the case may be) -- or spying, as the good people of the Gärtnerplatz in Munich keep saying.

A sort of equivalent to New York's Union Square, der Gärtnerplatz -- minus the nodding junkies, the smelly nutters, the ridiculous "protests" ... the homeless with pent-up, directionless anger ... directed toward themselves, at bottom; but then, at white people, black people, chess winners and losers ... People with hair, and wearing glasses.  Or not.

At the world and everyone, every thing in it.

... unlike Union Square, in fact.

Der Gärtnerplatz is not unpleasant.

November wird hundsmiserabel, I think rudimentally to myself - like I'd think to myself forty years ago, when English was a new language.  Then twenty years ago, when I first visited Munich, I instantly felt that I'd spend some time here.  Relatively quiet and small, i.e., liveable, compared to the ugly, pretentious slut, Berlin and that clenched New York pretender, Frankfurt.

"Franky-Boy!  Mr. Albert Sinatra!" the DJ'd announce giddily ... and the bar would erupt in a marble-mouthed chorus - like a room full of stroke victims, shouting heavily accented, tone-deaf English:  Ist!  Op!  Zum!  Du!  New-York, New-YORK!!! ... 

"Franky-Boy!  Albert Sinatra!" the DJ'd cry, and the Weissbiers would hoist to the sky and I'd sigh, and just know I at least had to try and get back here!

"Polizei!  Hilfe!  Polizei!"  A night cry ...

I slip out the door of my terrible pension, across from the station, and go down to see.

There's a guy on the ground, with a boot in his back:  "Release me!" the guy's yelling up, in English, to a man in green, one of Bavaria's Finest.  "Bullenschweine!" (the guy's switched to German) ... "Sofort!" he shouts to the boot in his back (and the cop's deaf ears).  "Release me!" he Englishes again, "Immediately!"

The Bavarian cop presses down in a Schuhplattler.

"Free sex!  She was giving him free sex!" the guy yelps.

And nobody is really quite sure what that means.

The next night, I spy the guy, Larry, rolling (for he'd had a chair, and been unceremoniously dumped from it the night before by the 'man in green', one of Bavaria's Finest) through the Gärtnerplatz.

I ask him what happened:  what he'd done, and why he was being arrested?

"Wasn't me," he avows.

"Yes it was," I avow back.

He asks me to wheel his chair "just up the street".

Well, I'm not sure what to do, really.  'Kindness breaks no bones', as they say here ... but I don't have time to be wheeling Larry!  The German autumn night is young, and I'm supposed to be meeting meine Frau ... Meine Frau ist stinksauer auf me mow ... er, now ... and I was going to bring her some Blumen flowers.

Eenie meenie meine Frau ...

Can't be wheeling Larry now!  But he's an American, like me, in Paris ... Larry, Gene Kelly and I ... start pushing, his weird German wheelchair across the Gärtnerplatz.

"That's it," he grunts, "just up here."  We get to the steps of the Staatstheater, and I start thinking Larry might have a date too.  Gonna meet up his love for a night at the opera ... but no.  Larry asks me to hang a right.

Then another ... We go around again ... Twenty minutes or so later, we're back at the steps of the Staatstheater!

So, "This is where we part, my friend ... "

"Oh, I'm your friend now," the strange(r) Larry snaps.

I leave him, sitting in his chair as it begins to rain, again, in autumn Munich ... ein Sauwetter!

Not getting better!

November wird hundsmiserabel ...

"The Shadow", ©Jeff Glovsky

September...Auf Deutsch

September... Auf Deutsch

I've begun reading, just for shits and giggles (as they say in the old country), Extrem Laut und Unglaublich Nah - which is Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close ... auf Deutsch.

Photo(s) by Jglo

Now the fact that I can't speak, read or fully comprehend Deutsch without a dictionary, or a drunk companion, does not deter me.  I am giving it the college try!   I started at the beginning of this summer.  I am already on page six.  I've found that if I skip around to the English bits -- words that I recognize, like "New York City" ... "Money Can't Buy Me Love" ... "Stephen Hawking" -- the pages turn faster.

Der Herbst, autumn -- in fact, life in general -- is all about the pages turning.  I approach fifty ... My parents, still living, are in their eighties.  My brother, still stuck in the '80's, is forty (Just kidding about my brother ... He isn't really forty!).

We're OLD, dude.  Alten Säcke!  And yet, though I still might rage (or flail) against the "machine" and show petulant, (sort of) tongue-in-cheek truculence toward Facebook and "its" generation, I still dig sounds I know Gen Y finds interesting ... can get up when I fall still, and have all my hair.

Beyond this, I have begun doing the same thing Gen Y is all doing:  putting my "work" out there ... unabashedly, shamelessly tiring you with it - my writing and imperfect photographs ... Words & Images, Random Poetix and Faction by Jeff Glovsky.

The key difference between me -- that is, my own generation, so aptly (nondescriptly) labeled X -- and the Facebook / Gen Y crowd -- the so-called millennials -- is that I leave the house.  While Gen Y hides behind its computers and smart phones and mixers and apps, I enjoy nothing more than walking, live music, fresh air and potential ... while still creating, doing, being, like Y does ...

It's not entirely Y's fault, though - the fear and feeling of What's the Point? that it has.  Gob-smacked with the Great Recession and trying to feed itself and excel in the worst economy in 80 years ... with guns creating daily havoc and so many jobs out there not worth the pennies (or "experience") they insultingly offer ... the running for the comforts of (mom's) home and "man caves" -- not to mention the support and opprobrium of vast "communities" of global strangers -- can be sweetly tempting ... in the same way I loved lying on my bed or sofa, "channel surfing" and talking to friends on my land line back in the day ... I get it.  I get the urge, almost the need, to stay home.

What I don't understand, and never will, is the eschewing of normal, everyday, whole life functioning.  Millennials seem to have collectively blown off driver's licenses, cars, homes, careers, marriages, children ... adulthood.  Intellectual curiosity ... anything with the faintest whiff of active participation.  They are a musical bunch, to be sure - capable of passively (aggressively) tuning out; but give them an instrument, or a book, it will languish untouched - unless it's an i-Something.  If it's a shimmering, vibrant keyboard graphic, or wildly animated guitar or drum kit ... That, they will pick up and click on, to "play"!

But I'm lumping now ... painting with broad strokes.  Like a racist or homophobe, I'm lazily generalizing.  Like every alter Furz (old fart) gone beyond 40, I'm trying to root for my own generation, and the certainties of the world I knew when I made the rules up while going along, and the paradigm shifted for my demographic.

I am over.

As the torch becomes past ... and the leaves of youth fade and fall like sex around my ankles, I can only watch, helplessly mixing metaphors ... hiding away inside a new world I wasn't born into, and don't (yet ;) fully comprehend.

"Verzauberung (Enchantment)", ©Jeff Glovsky

My Night on the Street

I fell down the other night.

I don't do drugs, I wasn't drinking.  Just, walking along the fringe of the fringe, on the south side of Union Square Park, I wasn't paying attention and suddenly, my right foot found itself not finding sidewalk.

Instead, to my surprise and embarrassment, I found myself stumbling off the curb.

In slow motion, I lurched like a grazing animal, suddenly on all fours... then on my side (Tuck and roll, I recall very clearly thinking.  Tuck and roll!).

Then flat on my back in Union Square.

As I'm getting up from 14th Street, looking around to make sure no one's pointing and laughing, a 20-something shambles past and asks, "You alright, man?"

I leap to my feet (or tell myself that I do... Actually, I get up in reverse slow-motion, sadly paused on the grazing animal frame), and mumble, "Fine, I'm fine.  No idea how that happened."

The 20-something's no longer even around - having perfunctorily asked the old man who fell down in front of him if he was okay, but then hurriedly shambling off on his way.

The fact that the old man (me!) was able to "leap to his feet" (in his mind, at least), as opposed to continuing to lay on his back in the street like a testudine, provides no comfort.  The old man was mortified, feeling his years.

All of that notwithstanding, however -- and despite a black smudge on one knee of a new pair of slacks! -- I felt worse for the shambling 20-something.

As he shambled off there, presumably to get back on Facebook, I thought of the void that he found himself in:  the creative cypher of his generation... the utter lack of creative anything.  The cutting and pasting, sharing and "adding", the mash-ups, re-blogging and "liking" without knowing why, or at all.

The propagation of mediocrity... the computer-made images, sounds and graphics, the "music" unwritten by human beings... or written once, but co-opted, "remixed" now by people with exaggerated senses of Self; or self-esteems poking their heads out like flowers (or testudines)... reminding themselves feverishly that they CAN:

They CAN draw.  They CAN paint.  They CAN dance and make music... They ARE artists, producers, DJs and filmmakers.

They DO exist... but on the backs and shoulders of technology; or the original work of others that they feel entitled, and are openly encouraged, to "share".  Today, everything is "open source", like an urban dictionary or Wikipedia... ripe to be right-clicked, picked apart, distributed and contributed to, mainly because it CAN be.

But wait.  It's not yours.  So really, you CAN'T.

Thick-thighed specimen!  Irish step-dancing like Riverdance... sweating and not keeping up with yourself:  yes, you CAN dance.  By all means, you should knock yourself out!  You're allowed.

But you shouldn't.  'Cause really, you CAN'T.

So I lay there... just, not getting up from 14th Street.

From the fringe of the fringe south of Union Square Park, on my back in the dark, I retain no illusions:  pushing fifty and virulently anti-Facebook - unwilling to embrace fully the winds of social media change... having stumbled and fallen with nothing and no one to blame but myself... with only original thoughts, words and images... I am the biggest shambling loser.

I'm the one keeping me down for the count.