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War of the Worlds
So here’s the apocalyptic side to “a festival of lights”. So it’s fine and dandy to witness the glories of the cosmos (like the recent Geminids meteor shower) and have near religious experiences in the process. Here’s what f*cks with your head either as a series of coincidences accompanying the shower, or the government trying to subtly tell you something:
- The Syfy (Scifi) channel or some channel was showing back to back movies about alien invasions. I couldn’t help but watch “War of the Worlds” which turned out to be a very, very bad idea. The remake of War of the Worlds plays on pretty much every fear you could have: alien ship attacks, alien robot attacks, air planes going down, drowning in cars, Titanic-like boat going down, aliens that incinerate you indiscriminately, aliens that capture you and put you in a metal farmers’ market basket until they are ready to thrust their tentacle through you and suck out all of your blood, human kind’s extermination, mob hysteria, loosing your child, apocalypse. For those who didn’t see the new War of the Worlds: the aliens arrive in a stream of lightening bolts from the sky. So I couldn’t help but have a lump in my throat while watching the Geminids meteor shower.
- Also, for some reason, the powers that be seem to be testing the “Emergency Alert System” out. A lot. You know, that horrible nuclear bomb alert sound followed by, “This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast system. If this had been an actual emergency…” Those who saw War of the Worlds will know that this same message was being broadcasted during the alien invasion, saying “this is a TEST of the emergency broadcast system”–a test– even though it was sure damn well past an emergency. This test was playing on my TV upon my return of watching the Geminids meteor shower. These series of events are a great way to become an insomniac, but I don’t know if I was scared or more annoyed by the fact that the announcement said “this is a test of New Jersey’s emergency broadcast system”. New Jersey? I’m not in New Jersey! Are you telling me that in the event of an emergency Inwoodites are screwed because Manhattan forgets we exist and New Jersey is calling us theirs even though there is a freakin river between us? Inwoodites better start building rafts and canoes because it looks like we will be screwed.
- The Hadron seems to be up and running again.
The broadcast alerts are still going on… Just when War of the Worlds was receding from my mind a day later, as I dozed off with a smile on my face listening to Craig Furgeson, suddenly, in the middle of one of his jokes, the horrible nuclear bomb alert sound blasted like a siren with a “test” message. Success in finding a sound that will jerk anyone out of a soundful sleep.
So take it as fiction and believe what you will. The arts are a great way to send mass messages to people: either to have us buy something, to act a certain way, to serve as a mirror for our fears and desires, or to subtly prepare us for an alien invasion.
If Cuba had a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade…
Once again I was not able to get myself out of bed at the crack of dawn, shuffle to the packed train, and join the mass of out-of-towners with their spawn in tow and witness the spectacle of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I’m not hating on the parade. My childhood memories are filled of being dragged out of bed to go to it (after staying up late having visited the balloon set up the night before). Really I just wanted to go because it meant a container of hot chocolate and perhaps a visit to a Greek diner for some scrambled eggs. And we didn’t go to the musical orgy on 34th street- we kept it real as a parade should be enjoyed: people passing you, you cheer hooray! and then you walk away.
That said I watched some of it on TV this morning, not with child wonder eyes but as an anthropologist. We all know this, but either this year’s new balloon additions drove the message home more or things are getting worse: it is a parade of raw Dinsey packaged consumerism! All I got from watching that parade was what movie is coming out soon (Smurfs, 2011), whose CD is coming out next (Andrea Bociello Christmas albums and a plug for the opening musical, White Christmas), what retro toys are making a comeback (Care Bears?!) and that Planter’s Peanuts (making a cameo in his Monopoly Man tux) is now being made with sea salt. The recipe Macy’s uses is the same witchcraft Disney utilizes to mesmerize our oh-too-innocent young seeds.
That said, I wondered what a Thanksgiving Day Parade might look like in Cuba:
If Cuba had a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade… – continue reading …
Respect the Hustle
If Cuba ever sinks down the cheese path of commercialism, one souvenir to buy will be t-shirts that say, authoritatively, RESPECT THE HUSTLE. Even if an influx of resources suddenly cure the population from the hustle bug of survival, surely it should be commemorated and included in the museum of the revolution. Because if you can trick material objects into longevity like making a 1950 Cheverlot run in 2009 like it’s (sort of) new, if you can sell people fake steaks that are really fried mats or pizza with condom “cheese”, then your ability of hustling a fellow human being with simple words has gotta be good by default.
Hail the hustle in Cuba! Done with a straight face, intelligence and craft, you got to respect it. Recognize and ascertain whether you should accommodate the hustle. How much is it for you to loose this battle? Can you acquiesce without being cheated and everyone’s dignity maintained? If not say, “I respect the Hustle”, then walk away. If acquiescing you have a choice of either remaining a passive participant, or leaning close to the Hustler and whispering with a tilted head and squinted eye, “Asere. Don’t try to hustle me. I got you anyways.”
More to come on some specific hustles.
Breaking the Matrix
My breaking the matrix… well it’s a lot of things, but right now the challenge seems to take its example in salsa and performance. It scares me silly, and I push myself, but shy away more. I retreat at the thought of watchful expectation, but also hold high expectations.
It’s good to know though that this matrix exists and you have to transcend it. I’m chugging along, even though I seek an immediate transcendental moment. And I’m brave enough to tackle the salsa congress with just, what? 6 months under my salsa spandex belt?
What’s your breaking the matrix?
Dante’s Inferno, 8th Circle, Bolgia 9: Broken MTA announcement systems
“Sowers of discord” are placed in this circle of Dante’s Inferno, and who’s going to argue that those shrieking gargles we often hear on the subway or the platform do not perform such a function? In with air-conditioning you go, broken MTA announcement systems, and here’s why: when you’re broken, and broken real good as you often are, every minute or so we have to hear horrible scratchy blaring screams from subway speakers that are supposed to be in English, but are actually a high frequency form of alien language that must be meant to make your ears bleed. We’re already pissed we have to go to work, the caffeine has already got us jittery. We need to also listen to a cacophony worthy of the late X-Man Banshee?
how dumb we’ve become
Link to brandsalsa.com for an article on this name change, no relation to salsa dancing that I know of.
My normally relaxing, utterly transporting experience of watching Star Trek: The Next Generation was interuppted by an abomination on my TV set. The Sci-Fi channel has changed it’s name and logo to Syfy. How dumb have we become that we take a channel devoted to smart, cool things with a cool planet symbol and correct spelling to a dumbed down, bubble gum font brand? I can’t see this logo without cringing. It’s Sci Fi, I liked to be remind of the SCIENCE and the FICTION, not a cutesy name. The F doesn’t even get a capital letter. The linked article tells you the reality behind this, but right now it doesn’t sit well with me.
By the way, if you’re sensitive to caffeine, don’t drink a frappé after 5pm. I think I’ll be blogging for awhile. Darn foodies turned me into a caffeine freak.
Et en Arcadia
The most memorable moment of our recent Sicilian odyssey did not happen in a city, but between cities. We were on one of those two hour car drives, this time our destination was ceramics from Caltagirone and chocolate from the city of Modica. We were winding our way through the Sicilian countryside. Our cars followed a well paved highway. We were surrounded by fields of golden wheat, distant hills with olive trees, and flattened sun-dried grass with bundled haystacks that looked like round suitcases left long ago by the Cyclopean race. The highway served as an unlikely wormhole through an Arcadian landscape; we passed through it encased in our vehicles. For a long while the only reminder of human contact with the land was passing trucks. They swayed with heavy loads of agricultural bounties I imagined harvested from these golden fields. I was entranced by paradise. Et en Arcadia – continue reading …
That would be July…
Someone must have forgotten to tell someone that it’s July 4th and not June 4th when we have full fledged fireworks. Because at 9:45pm on June 4th in Inwood, a full blown mini Macy’s fireworks display was blasting in the sky. My guess is it came from Dyckman (everyone blames Dyckman. Best block!). Another theory is that the ghosts from La Marina set them off (when is our hang out going to open again?). Last theory is someone on their yacht on the Hudson set them off over champagne. Still, they were no joke. Dazzlers, teasers, rainbow sprinkles, halfies- you name it. Anyone else see it?
Pass me a molotov
If any of you have ever lived in or visited Greece, or perhaps have watched television in the last year, you know that riots, protests and strikes are fairly common and normal. My paranoid self would travel no where on the planet where the US government issued a warning for its citizens not to visit, but I’ve made Greece an exception, and traveled there in the middle of the Kosovo war.
Love and its doppelgänger lust often make you the invincible warrior. I can’t really recall what brought me back there at such a time, but I do know I felt secure enough to go. I was on an errand and needed to collect some paper work from someone’s office so hopped on the bus and got off 2o minutes later at my stop. I stepped off, the doors closed. I felt a tad bit strange. I shrugged my shoulders, got on with my chore, and exited the office about 10 minutes later. I had just missed the bus- there it was chugging along one of the busiest streets in Athens, except there weren’t any other cars with it. Just as there weren’t any pedestrians in the street. Suddenly I realized that I was very, very alone in a place that should normally be packed with shoppers, trolley cars, mopeds, and Roma kids (gypsies) selling tissues and water. It was like walking out onto Times Square mid day and finding it’s empty. Pass me a molotov – continue reading …
Loaded like a Freight Train….
GNR fans will appreciate this story. I was coming home from one of those miserable days at work, when a cloud follows you from the office, to the stairwell, to the revolving door of your work building, creeps down the subway stairs like a horror-movie mist and stands beside you in the smelly underground world of the subway. (People, wise up-it is not a coincidence that you go underground like a troll every day to be barfed up an hour later onto the surface to enter a slave-master’s domain. Think you’re any different because your job is “helping the world”? Its slavery nevertheless and will stay that way until our world and its masters start respecting the holistic individual). I was waiting for the A train, when a middle aged man with dirty-blonde (in every sense) long hair clad in jeans (pants, jacket and shirt) started to stumble towards the benches where I was standing. The man was drunk; he was clutching his forty-ounce in a crumbled brown paper bag that reminded me of life at the corner bodega before plastic bags. He suddenly burst out in chorus, air guitar and all, to the lyrics of Nightrain, except he changed it to match the train he was waiting for. So goes his song: Loaded like a Freight Train…. – continue reading …
