As luck would have it, I was able to attend a performance of the New York Classical Theatre’s production of ‘King Lear’ in Battery Park last evening. It so happens that my uncle’s partner Andrew was playing the part of The Fool, so the incentive to see this production was greater than normal.
The New York Classical Theater performs classic plays for free, outdoors in New York parks. The company performs in Central Park and Battery Park. The audience must move with the actors and the plays are staged in several different areas of the parks.
Seeing Shakespeare in the park is a great experience, especially the way it is done by the NYCT. The audience moves frequently at the cues given by actors that are incorporated into the dialogue of the play. Sometimes the action will move directly behind the audience, and people in the back row find themselves in the front row and must quickly sit down or scramble out of the way.
The Bard’s great poetic words are a joy any time or place, and Andrew was outstanding as The Fool. If you do not see some free Shakespeare this summer in New York, you are missing out.
My latest column is now online on Kotori Magazine’s Web site. It documents a fine evening several weeks ago when a friend and I organized a group to drink in Hell’s Kitchen’s finest dives.
The victor of the night was most definitely The Holland Bar. There were some bars we didn’t make it to. Rudy’s is a great bar but it was way too crowded. Collins Bar was not on our itinerary but I’ve been there and it is indeed a fine place. Siberia was shuttered.
Hell’s Kitchen is a very interesting neighborhood and I’ve always been fascinated by its dive bars. They, like quality dive bars everywhere, are a dying breed. Support them at every opportunity.
Let me know if you disagree with any of my assessments here or if there are any glaring omissions.
My latest Notes from a Polite New Yorker column is now online at Kotori Magazine. I was inspired by a former co-worker’s request of things she should do before she left New York.
I kept my list to 10 things, and tried to be more general in some cases. The list of things one should do before leaving New York could be endless. It would be an interesting exercise to try if you haven’t tried it.
Some things I thought about including but didn’t:
Eat a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s Deli. I didn’t think I could include Katz’s without including the Carnegie Deli, and that would bring up the Second Avenue Deli as well (though it is no longer on Second Avenue). Then I’d want to include a trip to Grey’s Papaya on 6th Avenue and 8th Street, and my list would get bogged down in a food fight.
Visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Visiting the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island are great and interesting, but it can be very time consuming, expensive and aggravating. You will pay about $15 for a ferry ticket to a private company to take you to Liberty Island, a national federal park. Swaggering U.S. Park Police will bellow at you as they hustle you through metal detectors so you will know how important they are. You’ll have to go to Liberty Island and take another ferry to Ellis Island. If you stay on Liberty Island, there will be very long lines to visit the Statue of Liberty. The Statue’s crown will not open again until this July. From the Staten Island Ferry, you can get great views of both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, for free.
Go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. St. Patrick’s Cathedral is a nice Cathedral, but so is the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and so is Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral. There are a host of synagogues, temples, churches and mosques that would be interesting as well. Once you’ve been to The Vatican, no other Cathedral will really impress you as much.
Yesterday, I had a business lunch with some colleagues. We met with two investment bankers and their group’s communications director at a nice restaurant in the World Financial Center not far from our office.
The lunch went well. We chatted amicably, the conversation was pleasant and the food was fine. I asked a few questions that were in keeping with the flow of conversation and everyone left in as pleasant a mood as possible.
But for some reason, while I was dutifully making eye contact and nodding my head and trying to concentrate on the things our lunch guests were telling us about the state of today’s financial markets, I couldn’t help but think about Terry Funk.
Terry Funk is not a journalist or investment banker, but a professional wrestler. You might know him better from some of his movie appearances. I first became acquainted with his work as a pre-pubescent wrestling fan watching the WWF on Saturday afternoon television. Terry Funk was also an early champion and big help to the original, independent, ECW, which made me love wrestling again.
He is more than 60 years old and has retired from pro wrestling several times. Although he has been wrestling since the 1960s, he is considered one of the originators of “hardcore” wrestling, and has left a trail of broken tables, dented chairs and bloody barbed wire in his wake.
So while the people on the other side of the table were explaining the industry verticals of their firm’s unique investment banking platform, all I could think about was Terry Funk battling the Sandman and Big Stevie Cool in a three-way dance, only to face Raven; Or Terry Funk battling Sabu in a barbed wire match. Then my thoughts drifted to how Terry Funk could crash through one of the nicely set tables at the restaurant, whether the dining area had a high enough ceiling to do a proper ladder fall, or what Terry Funk was doing at that exact moment.
I’m not exactly sure why my thoughts drifted to Terry Funk, but I have some ideas. Maybe it’s because Terry Funk represents a great artistic ideal. He has given his all to a part of show business that has chewed up and spit out more famous superstars, he has the respect of his peers and die-hard wrestling fans everywhere, and has done some great work doing what he loves.
Perhaps my brain was telling me to do as Terry Funk would do. Not kick my coworkers and the investment bankers in the face, put them in a sleeper hold or poke them with a branding iron. Follow my dreams, dedicate myself to doing what I love and let the chips fall where they may.
Late last week the company I worked for announced that everyone in the company whose pay had not been cut already was getting a pay cut. The pay cut goes into effect this week. At the rate things are going, I may get a chance to follow some of my crazy dreams.
But I won’t wait around for that. I’ll try to follow my dreams anyway, go down life’s road with the idea to go for it, try for things and not lead the conventional life. Maybe I’ll fail, maybe I’ll succeed. Maybe I’ll get to meet Terry Funk.
This past Tuesday evening, I wound up using a branch of my gym that is in midtown, near Carnegie Hall. It was about 8:30 at night when I left the gym and started walking to the A train.
I had crossed Broadway on 57th Street and was continuing west when I noticed an older woman stopped and began walking alongside me. I thought nothing of it at first, I figured she happened to discover she was heading the wrong way and was simply anonymously going about her life like me and 8 million other people. Then she spoke to me.
“Excuse me,” she said in a very pleasant voice. “You remind me of someone who used to work around here.”
I remained pleasant in return, and told her that I was not the person she thought I was. I have never worked in the midtown area.
“You remind me of someone that used to work around here.”
I am, but didn’t respond to the question because I don’t want to discuss all things Irish with strange women on the street.
She continued, “I live very close by, if you care to come over.”
“No thank you,” I said. She stopped and turned away as I continued walking to the subway.
Was I just propositioned by an elderly prostitute? I thought to myself as I stoically walked away. This woman was old enough to be my grandmother. She was neatly dressed; this was no bag lady or escaped mental patient. Maybe with our aging population and downturned economy, the elderly are selling their bodies to pay for what Medicare doesn’t cover. Maybe she was an eccentric million-heiress who wanted to bed a younger man, and if I had followed her home and done the deed she would have sent me on my way with millions in untraceable cash.
My real thoughts on this strange invitation ranged from religious fanatic to crazed lunatic to just sad lonely old person. She may be all three, but she was most certainly lonely and old. Unfortunately, the person who does accept this elderly woman’s invitation for a visit will probably not be a benign hurried commuter.
Loneliness is a big part of life, even in a city teeming with millions of people. The woman is one I’ll probably never see or hear from again. I will likely never know her name or who she was or when and how she dies. I only hope she finds the help she needs if she’s mentally ill or some companionship if she isn’t.
One year ago this month, two people close to me passed away within a few weeks of one another. I couldn’t avoid writing about Russell Lewis or Elizabeth Quilliam, but I knew that if I tried to rush it last year, it would not have been very good. So I started working on the column last year and basically re-wrote it over the last few weeks.
My latest column pays tribute to two very good people who lost their lives last April. Neither one was related to me by blood, but they were part of whatever larger and extended family I’ve somehow assembled through friendships and relationships.
My good friend and (and ex-girlfriend) Melissa Lewis, daughter of Russell Lewis, liked the column, and I am relieved. I hope you will like it too.
It’s important to remember the people in your life that have set a great example of how to live. Russell Lewis and Elizabeth Quilliam (“Mrs. Q” to me) knew that your family and friends are the most important things you have in life, and they lived accordingly.
This past Wednesday was April 15, the deadline in the U.S. for filing one’ taxes. This year I expect to get money back from both the state and federal governments, which is a nice change of pace from the past few years, when the tax authorities of both the state and federal governments seized my tax returns (without due process of course).
This year, April 15 was marked with “Tea Party” protests around the country, to protest the high rate of taxation, excessive deficit spending by the government, and other tax-related ills. I did not take part in any of the “Tea Party” protests. They seemed a co-opted coalition of libertarians and mainstream conservative Republicans that are right to oppose the Obama administration but don’t have a unified platform to be effective.
Despite what many of my conservative friends and fellow libertarians believe, Obama is no socialist. You don’t get over $800 million in campaign contributions (without federal matching funds) if you’re a socialist. More outrageous than any of his spendthrift economic policies—which are really only slightly more left-leaning versions of the previous administration’s policies and at least grounded in plausible economic theory—is his forgive-and-forget outlook on the crimes of the Bush White House. Yesterday, Obama ruled out prosecuting Bush administration officials involved in approving the torture of suspected terrorists. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…
But what these protests did achieve was greater recognition of the term “Tea bagging.” Tax protesters brandished tea bags and even planned to sling tea bags in the direction of the White House. Of course the tea party theme is a reference to the Boston Tea Party, a great patriotic act of protest in pre-Revolutionary America. But tea bagging—the practice of lowering one’s scrotum on an unsuspecting victim—is now more widely known. For that, I am very thankful.
History is full of stories of great empires that achieved dominance, crumbled from within, and then declined; achieved dominance, crumbled from within, and decline. The United States is not immune from these same forces of history.
Our military continues to be overextended in the Middle East. The U.S. government spends money it doesn’t have to bail out reckless banks and lethargic automakers and plans to spend more on universal health care and renewable energy. The Federal Reserve prints money out of thin air to buy government bonds as our No. 1 debt customer China worries aloud about the value of their investments.
At the same time, Mexico continues to collapse on our Southern border while politicians on both political parties favor amnesty for illegal immigrants that have flooded the country by the millions over the past decade. The overwhelming majority of Americans oppose amnesty. That doesn’t matter to our enlightened leaders, who are in the pocket of their corporate donors that favor open-border policies that leave wages suppressed and workers divided.
Americans are gradually migrating to areas where they will be among their own ethnically and culturally. Right and left ideologies both favor small, local organization of like-minded groups.
New York exhibits all of these traits. The post-September 11 unity in the city, like in the rest of the U.S., was short-lived. New York is as divided as the rest of the country. I wish it were not so, but it is and it may be too late to turn back the clock to a more unified time.
I hope for the best, but I find myself preparing for the worst.
My new column is now online at Kotori Magazine. It’s about the dismal state of the economy and the fragile position everyone is in. Even those of us who luckily still have jobs are on edge, waiting for the pink slips to land on our desks.
Should I get laid off again, things would no doubt be rough for a while. I am already trying to save as much money as I can in case this happens. I know I will make it through though.
And there is an upside to unemployment and a silver lining to every set back. If it were not for being laid off in 2001, I would not be involved with music the way I am today and I would not have an online column.
March started us on the path to spring by giving us a big dose of winter in the form of a blizzard. The approaching blizzard dominated the news Sunday and the city was prepared.
My commute to work in the mornings is usually delayed and crowded. The MTA does such a poor job on a daily basis that commuters are accustomed to frustrating travel. I noticed no difference in my commute this morning even though trains were officially delayed.
I like the snow, though I’m sure my attitude would be different if I was a property owner who had to shovel it. No, I am a lazy apartment dweller who can enjoy the beauty of the snowfall and be clear of the most obnoxious of its consequences.
A big snowfall is a beautiful sight to behold: a blanket of white over everything, bright highlights tracing the boughs of the trees and fresh landscapes unspoiled by footprints that will be gone soon.
The blizzard brought snow to regions that don’t normally see it. It is a chance for our friends in warmer climates like the South to enjoy a taste of real winter. So what if you hot wet or you didn’t get to spend more time at work. For the first time in five years, students in New York public schools had the day off because of the snow. Who can be against that? Enjoy the snow.
This afternoon I went looking to buy the New York Post. I don’t normally read the Post. It’s honestly not that great a newspaper, though they have the best headline writers in the business. I normally read The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times.
So why was I out looking to buy the Post? Because there’s an effort afoot to boycott the post and have its editor and a cartoonist fired.
The NY Post ran an editorial cartoon by Sean Delonas that referenced the shooting death of a chimpanzee in Connecticut after it attacked and gruesomely mauled a woman and what it saw as the sloppy cobbling together of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the Stimulus bill.
The message of the cartoon is simple: the stimulus bill was such a crazy and sloppy piece of work it could have been written by a crazed primate. But for the NAACP, its supporters and fellow racial activists, the cartoon is racist.
Because racists have called blacks apes and monkeys, a cartoon that depicts an ape or monkey and in any way appears to criticize the Obama administration is depicting Obama as monkey and is racist. If that absurd jump in logic is not bad enough, NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous takes the racial hysteria one step further and said the cartoon was “an invitation to assassinate” President Obama.
If anyone should be offended by the cartoon, it is the victim of the recent chimpanzee mauling in Connecticut who suffered horrific injuries and her family. What makes the cartoon controversy so troubling is that such a narrow view promoted by race-baiting activists and politicians is taken so seriously by media outlets. The mainstream media should not only know better, but has a vested interest in standing up against such hysteria.
After the Post published a half-hearted non-apology, the NAACP demanded more careers be sacrificed at the altar of political correctness and called for a boycott of the newspaper until the cartoonist, editor and anyone else responsible for the cartoon’s publication be fired and a sincere apology made. The NAACP call for a boycott of the Post, which is why I was out looking to buy a copy of a paper I don’t really like and wouldn’t normally read.
“Anti-racism” has been the new McCarthyism in American politics for many years. The fear of being labeled a racist has the effect today that being labeled a communist used to have. Self-appointed guardians against racism apply that toxic label very loosely, to include anyone who questions policies of racial preferences, immigration or, since January 20, the policies of President Barack Obama.
The NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is celebrating its centennial. It was founded, in part, to stop lynching. Now that a person of color (“colored person” would be horribly racist, unless you’re the NAACP) has advanced to the White House, the NAACP finds itself in a search for relevancy. Smearing cartoonists and engaging in a racist witch hunt is not going to do it.
Instead, let us invite those denouncing the NY Post to heed President Obama’s call in his inaugural address, when he referenced scripture in asking us to now set aside childish things.
When I went looking for the Post, I didn’t find any. Both newsstands near my home were sold out. Maybe it was because it was late in the day. I prefer to think that it’s because people of all races are no longer drinking the PC Kool-Aid.
Like everyone else, you have probably lost count of the times you’ve been misled by a television weatherman, ripped off by a mechanic, or otherwise done wrong by an expert you relied on.
My latest Notes From A Polite New Yorker column is now online and you can ready my take on society’s overreliance on experts.
I make a special note to point out the dependence that many journalists have to experts. I work as a financial journalist covering the credit markets, the same credit markets that collapsed and took the global economy with it. Since there are few working journalists who have the expertise of the analysts, lawyers or brokers, we rely on talking to analysts, lawyers and brokers to get information. When groupthink takes hold within an “expert class” of sources, that thinking bleeds into news coverage.
I’d love to be able to say that I was a lone voice in the wilderness warning about impending economic doom, but I wasn’t. I listened to the experts when times were good. Good news stories are easier to write, and I did not feel confident enough in my grasp of the markets to ask the probing questions we should have been asking.
There are always dissenting voices though, and I’m proud that those were included in some of my stories during the heyday of easy corporate credit. So don’t discount experts entirely, but listen to a variety of them. And if all the news is good news, it’s too good to be true.
Today is Friday the 13th, a day cursed with bad luck for those who are superstitious. There are many compelling explanations for how this came about. That the number 13 subverts the number 12, which is considered a number of wholesomeness with nature and the world (embodied in the 12 months in the year, 12 disciples of Jesus etc.).
The most interesting explanation is that the Knights Templar were wiped out by order of the King of France on Friday, Oct. 13, 1307. That seems to have a lot of traction now, though apparently the superstition surrounding Friday the 13th didn’t begin until the 1800s.
While I can’t help but scoff at serious belief in the supernatural and don’t want to promote superstition, I must admit to being somewhat superstitious. I like odd good luck charms and rituals that will help me organize my day. My lucky number is four or some even number that features the number four, such as 14 or 44. I don’t like odd numbers. I trace that back to when I was in grade school and I was challenged to pick a number between one and 10. I picked four and was victorious. For the Chinese, though, four is like our 13 – an unlucky number to be avoided at all costs. So I would never cut in China with my choice in lucky numbers (I wouldn’t make it in China for a lot of reasons).
My latest ‘Notes From A Polite New Yorker’ column is now online on the Kotori Magazine Web site. Please check it out and leave comments, and then tell all of your friends to read it and leave comments.
Read about my counters with alligators, my journey to the tomb of John Kennedy Toole, and my tracing the footsteps of Ignatius J. Reilly.
One thing I neglected to mention in the column: On the Westwego Swamp Tour, Captain Tom Billiot fed marshmallows to the alligators. It is illegal to feed meat to an alligator, as they would associate humans with meat and would be more likely to see us as food instead of providers of food. Billiot explained that marshmallows are ideal to feed to alligators because they float, are easily visible and will be eaten by other animals if the gators ignore them. Every marshmallow I saw him throw was eagerly eaten by an alligator.
I also managed to get to a very good punk rock show at the Dragon’s Den. The Toaster’s were headlining, but I was not able to stay for them. I saw the Zydepunks and a band from Chicago called Flatfoot 56, both excellent.
Another thing I forgot to mention is that even though I was in New Orleans in November, there were still beads stuck in the trees and power lines from Mardi Gras the previous February.
Barack Obama will be sworn is as President of the United States today, and the endless coverage of this event has been a gushing tribute. The media is reveling in the cult of personality Obama established in his run for the presidency.
People are planning where they will watch this historic event, gushing about missing work or finding a way to steal away from their jobs to watch Obama take his oath of office and endure the kingly pomp and circumstance I’m convinced would have sickened George Washington.
While many of my friends and coworkers plan to celebrate, I cannot help but remain skeptical. We are saying good bye to a bought and paid for Republican President who had no idea what he was doing and saying hello to a bought and paid for Democratic President who knows what he is doing but isn’t going to do the right thing either.
I expect that I will experience a lot of schadenfreude over the next four years as people realize they were sold a false bill of goods. Few seem to notice that he went back on his word regarding public campaign financing, domestic spying, offshore oil drilling, and withdrawing troops from Iraq—and that was just during the campaign. His positions in favor of amnesty for illegal immigrants (which he’s basically shelved for the time being, apparently) and his vacillation on the Second Amendment (not to mention the Fourth Amendment) made me unable to vote for him, but I can see why people did. After eight years of disaster, it was more of a gamble to go with McCain. And people see in Obama what they want to see.
Obama really is no better than any other politician. He’s not any worse, and it will be a relief to have a President who can speak well and not act like a buffoon. But he raised approximately $687 million during his campaign, and the bulk of that money did not come from small donors as his supporters would have you believe. Sadly, that kind of money talks louder than the Constitution, the needs of working Americans, or any gaggle of bloggers.
If we learned anything over the last eight years, it is that blind trust and praise in leaders during a time of crisis can be disastrous. So it was with Bush, so will it be with Obama. Don’t for one minute think that because we have a smarter president we can let our guard down. It’s never a bad time to stay skeptical.
George W. Bush is spending his last weekend as President of the United States. For political opponents of an outgoing president, this would normally this would be the time to offer thanks for years of service and best wishes for the future. Whatever conciliatory remarks I could make, they would be in the context that should Bush ever face a criminal trail for things he did while in office, he should be afforded all the protections the Constitution provides, even though he denied them to others.
While I could in no way support either Barack Obama or John McCain, I was happy that the election was a repudiation of George W. Bush. It was eight years too late, but it was good to see.
I am proud to count myself among the many who saw that the emperor had no clothes from the beginning. I couldn’t believe someone with his limited knowledge and transparent posturing could secure his party’s nomination. No way will the Republicans be so stupid as to nominate Bush, I thought to myself at the time, they’ll nominate McCain, who would do much better against Al Gore. But nominate him they did, and Bush managed to obtain the presidency.
While there are many scandals and shortcomings to choose from, I believe that the Bush administration will be most infamous for its ruthless exploitation of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The wreckage of the Twin Towers was still smoldering when the Republican National Committee began circulating photos of George W. Bush from that day in their fundraising letters. A Commander in Chief who managed to avoid service in both the Texas Air National Guard and Vietnam put on a flight suit and landed on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln like a taxpayer-financed version of ‘Top Gun.’ Pathetic.
Bush was consistently dishonest in both his rhetoric and his policies. He racked up more vacations than press conferences, handed over responsibility of important functions of government to incompetent political hacks, and shrugged off responsibility for all of it.
Bush’s glib manner insulted the dignity of his office and exhibited his lack of capacity to hold it. His disastrous policies that did not involve outright crime, corruption or fraud consisted of empty half measures and catch phrases. He was, as they say in Texas, all hat and no cattle.
Few people think that 2008 was a good year. The worst economic disaster in the lifetime of anyone under the age of 67 started this year, though it shouldn’t have surprised anyone to learn that our recession began last year. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continued to kill scores of Americans (U.S. death toll so far for the Iraq War: 4,221; for Afghanistan: 630). Several friends were laid off from work. Two people close to me passed away last year. I found one of their phone numbers still in my cell phone. I still haven’t deleted it. Good riddance, 2008.
I welcomed 2009 with a small group of friends. Like St. Patrick’s Day, New Year’s Eve becomes a giant amateur hour in New York’s bars. Prices and crowds go up and common sense bottoms out. I went to Connecticut and spent the night at the home of some high school friends, sitting by a fire and drinking in the wisdom of the great philosopher James B. Beam.
And like the start of every year, this year offers a new start, a new beginning. Things can be different, better, if we work hard enough for it.
My latest column is now up on the Kotori Magazine Web site. Go read it and post comments on it.
The column documents my trip to New Orleans in November. I had initially intended to write only one column about it, but there were too many things I thought I needed to include and so I will break up the story of my Louisiana adventures into two ore more installments.
Part I includes my travel to the city and my first few days there. One highlight was my tour of Lafayette Cemetery, which is located in the Garden District. I was staying with my good friend Voodoo Rue, who luckily lives in one of the nicer parts of the city.
One item I forgot to mention in my column was that for most of my stay in New Orleans, movie trailers were lined up along the street around much of the cemetery. I asked a security guard what was being filmed and was told that it was a made-for-TV film entitled Midnight Bayou.Jerry O’Connell and Faye Dunaway are rumored to be in the film. It is a period piece, and the actors I saw smoking cigarettes outside of their tiny trailers were in period costume from the late 1800s or early 1900s.
Yesterday was Black Friday, the day when the Christmas shopping season officially begins. Traditionally, the television news is filled with images of mobbed stores, long lines and the occasional brawl.
Yesterday in Valley Stream, New York, just outside the city, Black Friday became a completely tragic disgrace as a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by a mob of shoppers. Jdimytai Damour was a 34-year-old temporary worker who lost his life after being stepped on by dozens of what a witness accurately described as “savages.”
When asked to leave the store, people kept shopping. The store closed, but only temporarily. That someone was callously killed didn’t matter enough to the powers that be. Shopping needs to be done. Commerce is more important than human life.
If past and current economic crises have taught us anything, it’s that there are things that matter more than the almighty dollar. Capitalism, like society in general, only works when it’s tempered by morality and a sense of decency. If we lose that, we lose it all.
Thursday is Thanksgiving, an occasion for gluttony, but also to take stock in all that we have to be grateful for. You will hopefully be spending it with family or friends, but please commemorate it somehow. It requires no religious faith and is a uniquely American holiday.
I give thanks to whatever powers enabled my brother to get a plane ticket so he could fly to New York and spend time with family. I am thankful I’ll be feasting on turkey with the Sheahan clan come Thursday.
I’m thankful I have good friends, from all corners of the U.S.A. and the globe.
I am thankful that I still have a job, when many people more educated, knowledgeable and skilled than I have been put out of work. I am thankful I work with nice people and have a sympathetic boss who appreciates creativity. I am thankful for good music and the people who make it.
I am thankful that I have my health and a roof over my head, a cat who is less of a bitch every year, and a blog.
