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August 31, 2005
WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS
When the levee breaks I’ll have no place to stay.
Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan,
Lord, mean old levee taught me to weep and moan,
For a few hours there it looked like New Orleans had dodged the big
meteorological bullet as Hurricane Katrina veered away from a direct
hit. The worst-case scenario involved the ocean flowing into the bowl-
like topography that is New Orleans. Unfortunately, the city's undoing
came from an ever-present yet less imminent threat. The levee keeping
Lake Ponchartrain from flowing into the city busted--along a length of
200 to 500 feet depending on reports--and the lake is pouring into the
Big Easy.
The devsstation of such an event really can't be overstated. New
Orleans is a city of more than a million people and has historical
roots stretching back hundreds of years, before the formal foundation
of this country. Its milieu of Spanish, French, and American culture
is evidence of the territory's mixed provenance and a testament to what
makes America the country it is.
Right now, New Orleans is literally drowning, as are many of its
residents. Power is down; fuel, potable water, shelter, and food are
scarce. While an event like 9/11 was a true affront to sovereignty
that aroused a sympathetic reaction, what's happening right now in
Louisiana (and neighboring states) is a catastrophe that threatens the
well-being of a number people of a much greater magnitutde.
I'll take this time and space to link to a
href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9115520/" target=_blank">page at
MSNBC, which lists various avenues to contribute aid in time of a
national disaster. If you happen to be in Louisiana and need Red Cross
assistance, please call them here: 1-800-469-4828.
Posted by Lexiphane at 12:18 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 27, 2005
ALMOST-END-OF-SUMMER EXTRAVAGANZA
src="http://www.lexiphane.com/mt/archives/TheDirtyTalk2.jpg"
width="300" height="417" />
I bemoan the end of summer in NYC mostly because it means every idiot
in town who thinks blowing several grand to play "Spring Break, The
Hamptoms: Older, Fatter, More Ridiculous" is a great idea returns and
starts crowding me. The last weekend before Labor Day weekend,
however, holds out some hope for some last-minute city-centered
enjoyment tomorrow.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of meeting playwright Michael Puzzo,
who was hilarious and has a show at this year's
href="http://www.fringenyc.org/">Fringe Festival. The last
performance of his play The
Dirty Talk is Sunday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. at The Flea
Theater on
href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=41+white+street+new+york&spn=0.0286
13,0.059197&hl=en">White Street, between Broadway and Church
Streets.
If you're on the lower West Side already, go ahead and check out the
href="http://cityguide.aol.com/newyork/bars/event.adp?evid=2422749">Blu
es, BBQ, & Fireworks party on the Hudson River. The
href="http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_things_to_do/upcoming_events/event
s.php?id=24819">NYC Parks site informs people that it's on Pier 14,
but that's on the East River. The actual party is on
href="http://www.hudsonriverpark.org/parkmap/greenwich.html">Pier
54, just west of West 14th St. and the Meatpacking District.
[note to NYC Parks Dept.: please get your shit together; that's
not even the right river!]
The Blues, BBQ, and Fireworks party was great last year, although I
remember a styrofoam plate of ribs filling with rainwater in weather
that precluded even sticking around for the fireworks. On the plus
side, Hell's Kitchen BBQ masters Daisy May's had the great idea to
staff its stand with very personable young women decked out in
restaurant t-shirts.
src="http://www.lexiphane.com/mt/archives/daisy.jpg" width="320"
height="240" />
Here's this year's line-up of performers and purveyors:
2005 Line up 2:30pm Kenny Neal/Billy Branch Duo 3:45pm Corey Harris and the 5x5 Band 5:00pm Guitar Shorty 6:15pm Candye Kane 7:45pm Hubert SumlinThis year’s restaurants include:
Daisy May’s BBQ U.S.A
Dinosaur Bar B Que
RIB
Smoked Barbecue
Spanky’s BBQ
Sated with off-off-Broadway theater and smoked meat, one may want to
make his or her way up to href="http://www.pier63maritime.com/">Pier 63 Maritime, which is
less of a pier than a floating railroad barge and the home of the
resurrected floating lightship href="http://www.fryingpan.com/">Fying Pan. 63 Maritime
is one of the hidden summertime gems of NYC. Just off West 23rd St.,
the former Lackawanna rail barge was how the railroad company used to
transport cargo from its eastern terminus (ending in Hoboken) across
the Hudson to NYC. Now it's the home of a retired fireboat href="http://www.fireboat.org/">John J. Harvey, the
Fying Pan, and a href="http://www.pier63maritime.com/p63m_tiki_hut.htm">food-and-drinks
stand that caters to people who want to spend their weekends
soaking up the sun on a barge instead of a beach--and I guess that
person would be me. Musical acts are the norm throughout the day and
if you stay long enough, you might get to catch the fireworks from the
BBQ festival just south of you.
Summer Sundays don't have to be lazy. Get your ass out there and enjoy
Gotham before the locals return and ruin it.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:12 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 26, 2005
THE END OF THE DEBATE
While I congratulate the Red Sox and the team's fans on their World
Series Championship last year and current lead in the American League,
this interesting rivalry promotion by Poland Spring puts to rest any
argument over which is the greater team, although I'm a little
disappointed that the Ultimate Yankee Fan didn't go for the bodypaint
like the Sox Fan did. Who do you think is the greatest Ultimate Fan,
target=_blank">Scout C. for the Yankees or Mike S. for the Red Sox?
Posted by Lexiphane at 2:32 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
THE DIRECTION OF SOUND QUALITY
The Washington Post has an
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2005/08/25/AR2005082501999.html"
target=_blank">interesting article today about the imminent decline
of compact discs as a musical storage format that is an example of, but
doesn't identify, divergent trends in consumer audio. A casual
impression of the state of consumer audio would seem to be an unbroken
progression of increasing sound quality, while this is not necessarily
the case. Audiophile purists could maintain that it is the somewhat
dated format of LPs that provide the purest listening experience,
because there is no reduction of the recording through a digital
sampling process that removes small portions of a pure analog signal.
The average audio consumer, however, has usually shown a preference for
portability, durability, and convienence over sound quality when
choosing a format. These factors are what spurred the widespread
adoption of the 8-track (to a lesser extent) and cassette tapes over
vinyl albums. On a head-to-head basis under optimal conditions vinyl
would compare more favorable to cassette tapes, but most people don't
listen to music under optimal conditions. Vinyl could become scratched
and worn, degrading the audio experience, and LP albums were
essentially non-portable. Cassettes allowed people to listen to the
music they wanted in their cars and, with the introduction of Sony's
Walkman, virtually anyplace else, while tapes were more resistant to
physical degradation.
For early adoptors of compact disc technology, there is almost no doubt
that audio quality was a major factor in choosing it over that of
cassette tapes. More widespread adoption, I suspect, had more to do
with the convenience of format than strict audio quality. The ability
to skip directly and cleanly from one track to another was a huge
advantage over cassette tapes. And while compact discs were susceptible
to scratching and data corruption if handled roughly, that seemed to be
less of a problem than cassette tapes becoming tangled or "eaten" by
their players. This was a common enough problem that it became a
regular plot point in movies and television. So while the audio quality
of compact discs is certainly better than that of magnetic tape
cassettes, I think this was less of a factor in their adoption than the
previously stated reasons.
The past half decade has shown one of the most rapid consumer adoptions
of a musical format in history. The availability of large capacity
storage drives on computers and devices like Apple's iPod, not to
mention the illicit but highly attractive availability of "free" music,
have spurred a conversion away from compact discs. How to classify the
new technology is difficult, because it is neither uniform in format or
medium. Just as on compact discs, music tracks are stored as digital
files, but compression formats like MPEG3 and Apple's proprietary AAC
have vastly reduced the size of these files and thus increassed their
portability. Consumers can now store huge quanitites of music on the
spinning magnetic hard drives of their computers or the compact version
of the same in portable devices like the iPod. Or they can store
smaller--but significant--numbers of these files on flash memory drives
that contain no moving parts. What's indisputable is that the sound
quality of these compressed files is lesser than that of CD audio.
Compression technology reduces the amount of data contained in a
recording with a subsequent reduction in sound fidelity. Clearly,
though, audio consumers are willing to put up with some lessening of
audio quality for the convenience, portability, and transferability of
these compressed formats.
Which makes especially puzzling efforts by the audio industry to forge
ahead in developing new formats that fly in the face of a longstanding
consumer preference for convenience over sound quality. Equipment
manufacturers and the like are attempting to develop and introduce
formats like DVD-audio and Super CD audio that will improve the sound
of music over CD-audio by vastly increasing the amount of data that can
be stored on a disc. It would be almost the opposite of compression.
An album that would be approximately 700 MBs on an audio CD and
compressed to 80 MB for storage on an iPod would be increased to a few
GBs of data. While this would likely be of interest for audiophiles,
it makes little sense in a consumer environment when the first thing
people do when they purchase an audio CD is to take it home and
compress it to a smaller file format. Quality and conveniece are
usually at odds with each other in the world of recorded audio and
consumers regulary make trade-offs whose balance more often than not
tilt towards the latter. Perhaps some day, storage formats or data
transfer rates will grow to such size that these trade-offs are not
necessary and any increase in sound quality will essentially be
costless in terms of convenience. Until then, any expensive investment
in new audio formats that diverge from consumers' longstanding
preference for convenience seems to be an ill-conceived pursuit.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:22 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
OVERKILL
src="http://www.lexiphane.com/mt/archives/barrett.jpg" width="400"
height="246" />
Evidence of domestic police departments' desire to become increasingly
militarized cropped up this morning on the front page of The New
York Sun. The paper
reports [subscription required] that the NYPD has purchased an
undisclosed number of Barrett M82A1 .50 caliber rifles. With a weight
of nearly 35 lbs and an overall length three inches shy of six feet,
this is a big weapon. Also, there probably are few light arms in
existence less appropriate for use in an urban setting such as NYC.
The Barrett .50 caliber is an anti-materiel weapon, meaning that it is
not a sniper rifle for shooting people, but one for disabling vehicles
or penetrating buildings. It can be effectively used on targets more
than a mile away. That is why it is an effective weapon in wide-open
terrain such as Iraq and in the first Gulf War. The Barrett .50
caliber would be of little use in an urban environment though, where
it's tremendous power would be more of a liability than an asset. The
ability to punch through walls and vehicles at a distance of a mile is
going to raise significant concerns in an area densely populated by
both people and buildings.
Even more bizarre, the article repeats a statement in a CBS2 news
report that the NYPD would be mounting the rifles on three of its Bell
412 helicopters. Effective marksmanship at ranges that the Barrett .50
caliber is capable of is almost entirely contingent on having a
perfectly stable shooting platform, or the exact opposite of a
helicopter. Plus, they're mounting a 6-foot-long rifle in a
helicopter? Isn't that going to be a tad unwieldy? This entire
venture strikes me as excessively asinine, even for a government
agency.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:24 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 24, 2005
STEVEN VINCENT'S WIDOW SPEAKS
Earlier this month I wrote about what appeared to be libelous and
slanderous assertions about murdered freelance journalist and blogger
Steven Vincent that appeared in the across-the-pond paper The
Scotsman [see
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/mt/archives/2005/08/the_credulous_s.html
">THE CREDULOUS SCOTSMAN, 8/11/05]. Repeating
allegations fed to it by anonymous British officials via the Basra
police, The Scotsman claimed that Steven Vincent's murder was
not because he had revealed the presence of violent Islamist assassins
in the ranks of the Basra police force, but because he was conducting
an illicit affair with his female Muslim interpreter. I thought that
accusation stank to high heaven, because 1) Vincent was already
married, seemingly happily, something the paper didn't acknowledge and
2) the paper provided no attribution or supporting facts to
substantiate such an accusation.
Shortly thereafter, Michigan history professor and general anti-war
antagonist Juan Cole
href="http://www.juancole.com/2005/08/constitution-still-deadlocked-35-
dead.html">published an item on his site linking to the rumors as
published in The Telegraph. He presented the accusation of an
affair between Vincent and his interpreter as an established fact and
states that it was Vincent's alleged ignorance that was responsible for
his kidnapping and murder. Way to blame the victim!:
Was American journalist Steve Vincent killed in Basra
as part of an honor killing? He was romantically involved with his
Iraqi interpreter, who was shot 4 times. If her clan thought she was
shaming them by appearing to be having an affair outside wedlock with
an American male, they might well have decided to end it. In
Mediterranean culture, a man's honor tends to be wrought up with his
ability to protect his womenfolk from seduction by strange men. Where a
woman of the family sleeps around, it brings enormous shame on her
father, brothers and cousins, and it is not unknown for them to kill
her. These sentiments and this sort of behavior tend to be rural and to
hold among the uneducated, but are not unknown in urban areas. Vincent
did not know anything serious about Middle Eastern culture and was
aggressive about criticizing what he could see of it on the surface,
and if he was behaving in the way the Telegraph article describes, he
was acting in an extremely dangerous manner.
The first thing that stands out as confusing to me in this bilious
little item is Cole's comments on Mediterranean culture. Isn't Iraq a
landlocked nation? If you were going to start throwing out historical
cultural attributions, one would be more accurate saying Mesopotamian
(Iraq), Persian (Iran), or Arab (the peninsula to the south of Iraq).
I think you could describe Lebanon perhaps as Mediterranean as the
Phoenicians had a long history of trade and exploration of the
Mediterranean Sea. But more accurately, I would say a desire to murder
your womenfolk for wounding a feeble sense of male "honor" would be the
hallmark of an Islamist fundamentalism. What do I know, though? I'm
not a professor of history at Michigan.
Anyway, Lisa Vincent-Ramaci, Steven Vincent's widow, wrote an e-mail
reply to Prof. Cole regarding his thought that her husband's death was
his own fault and the result of his philandering. She copied it to the
comments section of the military blog
href="http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/002640.html">Murdoc
Online. Her full letter to Prof. Cole is re-printed after the
jump. From a quick Google search of his site, Cole does not appear to
have publicly retracted his statements regarding Vincent's alleged
affair, acknowledged Mrs. Ramaci-Vincent's disputation of the facts, or
even apologized for repeating unsubstantiated rumors related to his
murder. He appears to be a singularly despicable type of person,
beneath the contempt of people like the late Steven Vincent or his
wife. Please read her letter.
Mr. Cole -(I refuse to call you professor, because that would ennoble you. And
please change the name of your blog to "Uninformed Comment", because
that is precisely what the above paragraph is.)I would like to refute this shameful post against a dead man who can no
longer defend himself against your scurrilous accusations, a dead man
who also happened to be my husband. Steven Vincent and I were together
for 23 years, married for 13 of them, and I think I know him a wee bit
better than you do.For starters, Steven and Nour were not "romantically involved". If you
knew anything at all about the Middle East, as you seem to think you
do, then you would know that there is no physical way that he and she
could have ever been alone together. Nour (who always made sure to get
home before dark, so they were never together at night) could not go to
his room; he could not go to her house; there was no hot-sheet motel
for them to go to for a couple of hours. They met in public, they went
about together in public, they parted in public. They were never alone.
She would not let him touch her arm, pay her a compliment, buy her a
banana on the street, hyper-aware of how such gestures might be
interpreted by the mysogynistic cretins who surrounded her daily. So
for you brazenly claim that she was "sleeping around," when there is no
earthly way you could possibly know that, suggests to me that you are
quite the misogynist as well. Cheap shot, Mr. Cole, against a
remarkable woman who does not in any wise deserve it.This is not to say that Steven did not love Nour - he did. And he was
quite upfront about it to me. But it was not sexual love - he loved her
for her courage, her bravery, her indomitable spirit in the face of the
Muslim thugs who have oppressed their women for years. To him she
represented a free and democratic Iraq, and all of the hopes he had for
that still-elusive creature. And he loved her for the help she gave him
- endangering herself by affiliating with him because she wanted the
truth to come out about what was happening in her native city of Basra
and the surrounding area. Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that it
is possible to love someone in a strictly platonic way, but I assure
you, it can happen - even between men and women.And yes, he was planning to to convert to Islam and marry Nour, but
only to take her out of the country to England, where she had a
standing job offer, set her up with the friends she had over there,
divorce her, and come back to New York. He had gotten her family's
permission to do so (thereby debunking the "honor killing" theory), but
more importantly, he had gotten mine. He called one night to say that
it had been intimated to him that Nour's life was essentially going to
be worthless after he left; since he was an honorable man (a breed you
might want to familiarize yourself with), he then asked what I thought
he might do to help her. I told him to get her out of the country and
bring her here to New York. However, the only way she could have left
Iraq was with a family member or husband. Since her family had no
intention of going anywhere, Steven was her only recourse, and it would
have been perfectly legal for him to convert, marry her, then take her
out of Iraq to give her a chance at a real life. (Now that that avenue
is closed to her, I have made inquiries to the State Department about
the possibility of my sponsoring her in America. Do you perhaps labor
under the misapprehension I am such a spineless cuckold that I would do
put myself out thusly for the woman you believe my husband was
traducing me with? If so, I'm guessing you don't know much about the
Sicilian female temperament.)As to your claim that "In Mediterranean culture, a man's honor tends to
be wrought up with his ability to protect his womenfolk from seduction
by strange men", it may perhaps have escaped your notice that Iraq does
not abut, in any way, shape or form, the Mediterranean Sea. Italy is a
Mediterranean culture, as are Spain, Greece, Southern France. In none
of them is "honor killing" an accepted form of "protecting womanhood".
As to the southerly lands like Morocco and Algeria, they are not, in
the general scheme of things, considered Mediterranean cultures - they
are considered Arabic, a whole different beast. For you to seemingly be
unaware of this, and then to say that my husband "did not know anything
serious about Middle Eastern culture" again begs the question, just
where do you get off? If you cannot differentiate between Mediterranean
and Middle Eastern cultures, how is it you feel qualified to
pontificate so pompously?How often have you been to the Middle East, Mr. Cole? In 2000 Steven
and I spent almost a month in Iran on vacation. In 2003 we spent 10
days over Christmas in Jordan. In the last 2 years he had made not one,
not two, but three trips to Iraq, and at the time of his death had
about 7 months of daily living there under his belt. Can you offer
comparables?How much Arabic do you speak, Mr. Cole? Steven had been learning Arabic
for the last two years, and was able to converse simply but effectively
with the people he came into contact with. He had many expatriate
friends in the Muslim world from whom he was always learning. As I sit
here writing this at what was his desk, I can look at the literally
dozens of books he devoured about Islam and the Middle East - each one
thick with Post-It notes and personal observations he made in the pages
- as he sought to comprehend and absorb the complexities of the culture
and the religion he felt, and cared, so deeply about. If you would like
a list of them, please email me back and I will be happy to send you a
comprehensive accounting.Yes, Steven was aggressive in criticizing what he saw around him and
did not like. It's called courage, and it happens to be a tradition in
the history of this country. Without this tradition there would have
been no Revolutionary War, no Civil War, no civil rights movement, no a
lot of things that America can be proud of. He had made many friends in
Iraq, and was afraid for them if the religious fundamentalists were
given the country to run under shari'a. You may dismiss that as naive,
simplistic, foolish, but I say to you, as you sit safely in your ivory
tower in Michigan with nothing threatening your comfy, tenured
existance, that you should be ashamed at the depths to which you have
sunk by libeling Steven and Nour. They were on the front lines, risking
all, in an attempt to call attention to the growing storm threatening
to overwhelm a fragile and fledgling experiment in democracy, trying to
get the world to see that all was not right in Iraq. And for their
efforts, Steven is dead and Nour is recuperating with three bullet
wound in her back. Yes, that's right - the "honorable" men who abducted
them, after binding them, holding them captive and beating them, set
them free, told them to run - and then shot them both in the back. I've
seen the autopsy report.You did not know him - you did not have that honor, and you will never
have the chance, thanks to the muerderous goons for whom you have
appointed yourself an apologist. He was a brilliant, erudite, witty,
charming, kind, generous, silly, funny, decent, honorable and complex
man, who loved a good cigar, Bombay Sapphire gin martinis, Marvel
Silver Age comic books, Frank Sinatra, opera and grossing me out with
bathroom humor. And if he was acting in a dangerous manner, he had a
very good excuse - he was utterly exhausted. He had been in Basra for 3
months under incredibly stressful conditions, working every day, and
towards the end enduring heat of 135 degrees, often without air
conditioning, which could not have helped his mental condition or
judgment. He was yearning to come home, as his emails to me made
crystal clear. But on August 2nd, two days before my birthday, he made
the fatal mistake of walking one block - one - from his hotel to the
money exchange, rather than take a cab, and now will never come back to
me. I got a bouquet of flowers from him on August 4th, which he had
ordered before he died, and the card said he was sorry to miss my
birthday, but the flowers would stand in his stead until he made it
home. They are drying now in the kitchen, the final gift from my
soulmate.I did not see your blog until tonight. I was busy doing other things -
fighting the government to get Steven's body returned from Basra days
after I was told he would be sent home, planning the funeral, buying a
cemetary plot, choosing the clothes to bury him in, writing the prayer
card, fending off the media, dealing with his aging parents, waking and
then burying him - but I could not let the calumnies you posted so
freely against two total strangers go unchallenged.You strike me as a typical professor - self-opinionated, arrogant, so
sure of the rightness of your position that you won't even begin to
consider someone else's. I would suggest that you ought to be ashamed
of yourself for your breathtaking presumption in eviscerating Steven in
death and disparaging Nour in life, but, like any typical professor, I
have no doubt that you are utterly shameless.Sincerely,
Lisa Ramaci-Vincent
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:21 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
BAD CAR!
Free commuter tabloid amNewYork takes the media's anti-SUV
bias to absurd lengths this morning
href="http://www.nynewsday.com/other/special/amny/" target=_blank">in a
story about a vehicular assault in midtown yesterday afternoon.
The lede opens the story with a tale of a bad car gone . . . worse:
Seven people, including a police lieutenant, suffered
minor injuries when an SUV fled a traffic stop and veered onto a
sidewalk in Midtown yesterday afternoon, police said.
The photo of the the perp park is underlined with this caption:
"A cop stands by the offending SUV."
Yep, that car needs to go away for a long long time. Perhaps it will
never be rehabilitated. Or refurbished. It probably deserves to spend
the rest of its waranteed days making license plates.
Elsehwere in the article, the guy accused of speeding away from the
traffic stop after a cop spotted a bag of cocaine was described as
"[an] occupant of the SUV." Also, "The SUV was stopped," "The SUV fled
with the lieutenant's arm wedged in the door and briefly dragged him,"
"The SUV sped south, struck another vehicle and mounted the sidewalk."
Damn, this is almost as badass as when Herbie the Lovebug shot those
two clerks while robbing a liquor store.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:17 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
WWJA?
Perhaps concened that his mixed messages of religious mania and
political violence were being overshadowed recently by more insane
proponents of a different creed, Pat Robertson decided to toss his
dunce cap back into the rehetorical ring this weekend by
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/politics/24robertson.html"
target=_blank">advocating the assassination of Venezuelan
"President" Hugo Chavez.
While anyone familiar with this site should know that I'm a huge critic
of Castro-puppet Chavez and wouldn't take it too hard if he decided
made a Salvador Allende-style exit from office, it should be noted that
Pat Robertson is a doddering old fool and his remarks should be taken
as seriously as a call for political show trials in the U.S. by Dr.
Phil. Along with his remarks shortly after 9/11 that the terrorist
attacks were a punishment visited on the U.S. by a wrathful God for
allowing a culture that tolerated such abominations as "Will & Grace"
and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy", this off-the-cuff off-his-rocker
assassination endorsement is just further proof that Robertson is
likely suffering from dementia-induced logorrhea. He needs to step
slowly away from the microphones and the cameras before he more solidly
confirms his reputation as the gigantic jackass he undoubtedly is.
Posted by Lexiphane at 8:55 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 20, 2005
FELICELEBRITY
Back in June I adopted my cat Collins from the
href="http://www.barcshelter.org" target=_blank">BARC shelter in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He was clearly the pick of the discarded
litter--a stray that had been picked up in a catch and release program
for feral cats, then discovered he wasn't feral, but just a runaway
domestic. Collins must have made quite an impression on the staff at
BARC because he's still featured as a poster-cat on the site's adoption
page. Until I get the site rebuilt and the galleries resurrected, this
is the best I'm going to be able to do in getting everyone a picture.
He's the grey and black cat
href="http://http://www.barcshelter.org/adopt/index.html"
target=_blank">on the right.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:20 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
JUDICIOUS PRESCIENCE
Say what you will about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts; the guy
certainly is prescient when it comes to sketchy characters. A memo
that probably made him appear like a stick in the mud back in 1984 when
his boss President Reagan wanted to honor Michael Jackson for his good
citizenship, looks much more reasonable 20 years later. An excerpt
from a Washington Post
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2005/08/19/AR2005081901801_pf.html"
target=_blank">article about the memo:
"If one wants the youth of America and the world
sashaying around in garish sequined costumes, hair dripping with
pomade, body shot full of female hormones to prevent voice change,
mono-gloved, well, then, I suppose 'Michael,' as he is affectionately
known in the trade, is in fact a good example. Quite apart from the
problem of appearing to endorse Jackson's androgynous life style, a
Presidential award would be perceived as a shallow effort by the
President to share in the constant publicity surrounding Jackson. . . .
The whole episode would, in my view, be demeaning to the
President."
Hard to disagree with too much of that. Plus, I like the idea that
someday an actor with the gravitas and timbre of someone like James
Earl Jones will be doing the books-on-tape version of Chief Justice
Roberts and reciting phrases like "sashaying around in garish sequined
costumes, hair dripping with pomade, body shot full of female hormones
to prevent voice change, mono-gloved." Actually, I can hardly wait!
Posted by Lexiphane at 5:00 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
LOST INNOCENCE ON RIVINGTON ST.
src="http://www.lexiphane.com/mt/archives/babeland.jpg" width="200"
height="156" />
Back in the Age of Innocence, when Mayor Giuliani was making like a
modern-day
href="http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/savonarola.html">Savonarola
, porno shops with a sideline in "novelty toys" were on the ropes.
That, frankly, didn't bother me too much. Those places were creepy and
filled with freaks and one would sooner chat up hookers around the Port
Authority bus station than venture into one of the neon-lit stores with
peep-show booths. But a pair of women who'd been operating a store in
easier-going Seattle since 1993 saw a market opening: a retail outlet
oriented towards adult interests with a sex-positive outlook. Maybe it
helped that the two women, Rachel Venning and Claire Cavanah, were
lesbians and unapologetic about their sexuality. In 1998, they opened
a store on Rivington St. called Toys in Babeland. The name was a
playful inversion of a classic film and kind of set the tone for the
establishment. Brightly lit, but without flourescent or neon lighting,
its wares were displayed openly--not behind curtains--and a helpful
staff was on hand to offer non-judgemental and well-informed
information about what may as well have been toasters or microwaves.
The store became a mecca (jeez, that'll piss off certain
fundamentalists) of sexual paraphenalia in an environment that allowed
people of all stripes to shop comfortably. By 2003, Venning and
Cavanaugh published
href="http://www.babeland.com/page/TIB/PROD/KH175369" target=_blank">
Sex Toys 101 and have been presenting workshops and
readings about sexuality by such women writers and practioners as
href="http://www.puckerup.com/home/?&=" target=_blank">Tristan
Taormino and
target=_blank">Rachel Kramer Bussel.
Tonight I was walking down Rivington and was struck by a sudden change
in the block scenery. The cute old-style signage (pictured above) that
previously adorned Toys in Babeland was replaced with an electric blue
awning that simply pronounced BABELAND in block letters with a
repeating graphic of + and - symbols representing the contact points of
batteries. The contrast between the old and the new was jarring. The
new store's facade looked more like a Radio Shack of vibrators or a
downtown strip club than a small business promoting a sex-positive
agenda. When I got home, I googled the Toys in Babeland name and was
directed to
target=_blank">Babeland.com. The site explained the recent
identity conversion:
In 2005 Toys in Babeland officially shortened its name
to "Babeland." Toys in Babeland had become much more than just a place
to buy sex toys, so the owners decided to present Babeland as a
destination, a lifestyle, a state of mind—all celebrating the simple
truth that sexually healthy people make the world a happier
place.
That's all well and good, but it calls into question the wisdom of
incorporating the positive and negative (+/-) signals of batteries as a
symbol of Babeland's current status. The logo is literally polarizing,
focused on hardware, and the opposite of the original atmosphere that
was more all-inclusive of sexual proclivities. Toys in Babeland wasn't
just a retail outlet, but a source of information and assistance for
women (and to a lesser extent, men) to shop without feeling preyed upon
by creepy dudes. Perhaps the owners of Babeland feel that the cultural
atmosphere has shifted far enough that they no longer have to assume an
identify of Ye Olde Vibrator Shoppe to deflect criticism. Still, it's
a little disheartening to see the little shop around the corner take a
step closer to becoming the Wal-Mart of butt plugs.
A good sign of the mainstreaming of sex toys--and something that may
have led 'Toys' to shed their disarming image is this article in the
href="http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/"target=_blank">San
Franciso Chronicle about how
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search.html/ref=br_ss_hs/102-2025758-
9029740?platform=gurupa&url=node%3D3760931&keywords=massagers&Go.x=0&Go
.y=0&Go=Go" target=_blank">Amazon.com has become the largest
purveyor of sex toys and whatnot in the country.
Good luck to the owners and staff of BABELAND. They've been doing NYC
right for a while now. I hope the recent corporate makeover doesn't
dampen the ardor of any of this city's distaff residents.
Posted by Lexiphane at 12:31 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 19, 2005
A VERY BOOTSY CHRISTMAS
Even though we're still in the dog days of August, it's never too early
to start thinking about Christmas. An interview with legendary funk
bassist Bootsy Collins in today's free commuter tabloid
amNewYork gives us another reason to anticipate a season to be
filled with funktastic cheer: Bootsy's recording a Christmas album!
While that may be a few months off, Collins is currently serving as the
musical curator of the
href="http://www.heineken.com/usa/cc/usa/amsterjam2005/">Heineken
AmsterJam festival at Randall's Island this Saturday, featuring
acts like Snoop Dogg and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The man who may
have invented the concept of bling responds to a question about words
to live by with some sage advice:
"You have to bring some funk to get some. You just
can't walk in a place and expect to get some funk. If you ain't
bringing no funk, the you can't get no funk. It like some guys say
'Man. She didn't gimme some.' But I say 'She didn't give you none
because you weren't bringing any yourself.' You have to bring some
funk to get some. Another thing is, you can't fake the funk or your
nose will grow."
Funkin-A, man.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 9:35 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 18, 2005
NOT QUITE A MIRACLE
What the fuck
It's a miracle
I'm even hereYou're over me
I hate New York
What do I care?
-"What Do I Care?", Juliana Hatfield, Made in
China
Like a bad girlfriend cancelling a long-awaited date the day before
it's supposed to happen,
href="http://www.julianahatfield.com/index.html" target=_blank">Juliana
Hatfield just axed her 8/19 show at
href="http://www.newyorkmetro.com/frame/set.htm?site=http://polishnatio
nalhome.com/warsawconcerts.htm" target=_blank">Warsaw in
Williamsburg. No explanation is given on her web site, but it's
possible that she pulled the plug because of poor ticket sales.
Hatfield recorded her latest album
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/B000A3XYNC/qid%3D1123765387/lexiphane.com-20/103-7277903-3623016"
target=_blank">Made in China on her own label, so a poorly
attended tour wouldn't just be disappointing, but personally costly.
The album is currently ranked #656 on the Amazon.com music sales chart
and didn't even break the Top 20 in Billboard's Indie Albums chart its
first week out. Or maybe Hatfield's just not feeling well, in which
case I hope she feels better and makes it back to the city soon,
because New York loves her.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:31 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 12, 2005
BIG STACK OF CLIPPINGS
Yesterday, Walter Mossberg
href="http://www.ptech.wsj.com/ptech.html" target=_blank">reviewed
a new and free piece of software called
href="http://www.EverNote.com" target=_blank">EverNote that acts as
a repository for all the bits and pieces of information you'd like to
save and access or act on at a later date. If you're like me--
especially where this site is concerned--you're constantly coming
across pictures, stats, quotes, text, and other information that you'd
like to come back to later, but eventually lose in a pile of loose
notes or scribblings that you can't find the original source for
anyway.
EverNote helps solve this problem in what appears a very blunt, but
turns out to be a very refined manner. Information from all manner of
sources, including word processor documents, spreadsheets, PowerPoint
presentations, online text, pictures, or even entire web pages can be
clipped or dragged into individual memo items that sit in one big pile
on the EverNote application. The helpful part is that you can assign
each note any number of pre-determined or custom-designated tags that
help you organize your notes as you see fit. So you can scroll through
your whole pile of notes on a timeline basis or you can filter all your
clippings based on the categories you assigned them. And best of all,
the info you copy into each note is matched with a link back to the
original file or web page from which it originated. I've been playing
around with the program this morning and I think it has a lot of
potential. The program is available for Windows, Mac, and Tablet PC
platforms. A Plus version is available for $35 that allows handwriting
recognition. The free downloadable version is available
href="http://www.evernote.com/en/downloads/" target=_blank">here.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:00 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 11, 2005
THE CREDULOUS SCOTSMAN
Last week we noted the murder of East Village blogger and freelance
journalist Steven Vincent in Iraq [see
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/mt/archives/2005/08/blogger_murdere.html
" target=_blank">BLOGGER MURDERED IN BASRA,
8/4/05]. Today, James Taranto of
href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110007093">Best of The Web
Today notes
href="http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1761552005">
an article in The Scotsman that seems to reveal something
about his death. The paper notes that originally it was assumed that
Vincent and his translator were abducted in broad daylight in a vehicle
marked as a police truck in retribution for an article published the
previous Sunday in The New York Times detailing the
infiltration of religious fanatics into Basra's police force. Also,
Vincent explained that some of these policemen with divided loyalties
to their religious leaders over civic authorities were responsible for
the execution of hundreds of former Ba'ath party members. The
Scotsman, however, seems to have uncovered some new information as
to why Stephen Vincent was kidnapped and murdered.
AN American journalist who was shot dead in Basra last
week was executed by Shiite extremists who knew he was intending to
marry his Muslim interpreter, it has emerged.Steven Vincent was shot a week before the planned wedding to Nouriya
Itais and had already delivered a $2,500 dowry to her family.
That's interesting, because Steven Vincent was already married to a
Lisa Ramaci Vincent, who still lives in their East Village home. And
if one visits his blog--
href="http://spencepublishing.typepad.com/in_the_red_zone/">In The Red
Zone--one will see that he opens each entry with the somewhat
intimate "Dear Lisa--". For a widely read journalist, it's interesting
that he treats his entire site as essentially an open letter to his
wife. That doesn't seem like the kind of thing you'd expect from a guy
about to run off with his translator.
What or who would lead The Scotsman to believe that Vincent
was killed for allegedly being on the verge of violating an interfaith
taboo? Well, the police told them! The same police force that was
previously thought to be heavily implicated in Vincent's murder.
But in London yesterday, British officials pointed out
that the police in Basra believed it was retribution for his affair."We warned him to look after his security in a more professional manner
than he was doing," said the official.
Note how they make Vincent seem to be culpable for his own kidnapping
and murder. Here's a question for The Scotsman. Who exactly
are these British officials in London peddling exculpatory insinuations
about Vincent's personal life for the Basra police force? If someone
is going to come out and sling mud on the reputation of a man who was
just murdered, making him out to be a philanderer when he can't defend
himself, it doesn't seem unreasonable for that person to do so publicly
and without a cloak of anonymity.
Posted by Lexiphane at 4:31 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
THE REAL MCCOY
src="http://www.lexiphane.com/mt/archives/hatfield.jpg" width="300"
height="307" />
Tuesday marked the release of a new album from the severely under-
heralded
target=_blank">Juliana Hatfield. Most people will remember
Hatfield from her turn as the indie-rock IT girl in the mid-to-late
90s, with such hits as "My Sister" and "Spin the Bottle", and that
href="http://www.julianahatfield.com/MICdiatribe.html"
target=_blank">really pisses her off. The new album is titled
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/B000A3XYNC/qid%3D1123765387/lexiphane.com-20/103-7277903-3623016"
target=_blank">Made in China and although I haven't heard
it yet, I plan on downloading it next week via
href="http://www.emusic.com" target=_blank">eMusic. You can see
Juliana live tonight when she rocks Hoboken's
href="http://www.maxwellsnj.com/index.html"
target=_blank">Maxwell's to the rafters. With CBGB on the
href="http://www.thevillager.com/vil_95/thisaintnofoolonaround.html"
target=_blank">verge of closing, Maxwell's might gain the title of
oldest and most-storied indie rock club in New York City, even though
it's in Hoboken, NJ. The club's on the
href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=1039+washington+st+hoboken+nj&hl=en
" target=_blank">corner of 11th and Washington in the Mile Square.
Take the NJ Transit #204 Bus from the Port Authority or hop on the PATH
and walk up the waterfront to 11th St. This'll be Hatfield's only NY-
area appearance until she rematerializes at
href="http://www.newyorkmetro.com/frame/set.htm?site=http://polishnatio
nalhome.com/warsawconcerts.htm" target=_blank">the Warsaw in
Brooklyn on the 19th. So don't blow it.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:13 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 10, 2005
FORGET IT JAKE . . .
"Movies With A View" continues its summertime outdoor movie series this
Thursday with a screening of Roman Polanski's
href="http://www.us.imdb.com/title/tt0071315/"
target=_blank">Chinatown, starring Jack Nicholson and Faye
Dunaway. Legendary director
href="http://www.us.imdb.com/name/nm0001379/" target=_blank">John
Huston co-stars as LA eminence grise Noah Cross, whose
unscrupulous behavior is not limited to his professional dealings.
Polanski himself makes a cameo in the film as a man with a knife who
confronts private investigator Jake Gittes: "You're a very nosy fellow,
kitty cat." The screening begins at sundown in the
href="http://www.brooklynbridgepark.org" target=_blank">Empire Fulton
Ferry State Park, just east of the Brooklyn Bridge between
href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=50+water+st,+brooklyn+ny&ll=40.7029
11,-73.992062&spn=0.021573,0.040280&hl=en" target=_blank">Main and Dock
Streets. If you've never seen Chinatown, both the movie
and the venue are highly recommended.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:08 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 9, 2005
MAKING SENSE OF BULLSHIT
I am a hardened skeptic and do not believe that alien beings travel
light years across the universe to sneak into people's bedroooms at
night and poke their occupants in the ass. Yet thousands of people
have reported such experiences and are unswayable in their conviction
that they were indeed visited by extraterrestrial beings. Harvard
psychologist Dr. Helen Clancy has now
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/health/09alien.html"
target=_blank">written a book detailing her examination of many
such people and her conclusion that her subjects had experienced a not-
uncommon psychological episode and their interpretation of the event
led them to believe that they had been visited by aliens after
absorbing cultural cues. The Japanese call it kanashibari and
it is what we call sleep paralysis.
Dr. Clancy's accounting for abduction memories starts
with an odd but not uncommon experience called sleep paralysis. While
in light dream-rich REM sleep, people will in rare cases wake up for a
few moments and find themselves unable to move. Psychologists estimate
that about a fifth of people will have that experience at least once,
during which some 5 percent will be bathed in terrifying sensations
like buzzing, full-body electrical quivers, a feeling of levitation, at
times accompanied by hallucinations of intruders.
Either through suggestion under hypnosis or a pre-existing propensity
for belief in the paranormal, people who experience sleep paralysis
synthesize the episode into something that conforms to their worldview
or provides explanation for the essentially unexplainable.
Yet abduction narratives often have another, less
explicit, dimension that Dr. Clancy suspects may be central to their
power. Consider this comment, from a study participant whom Dr. Clancy
calls Jan, a middle-age divorcée engaged in a quest for personal
understanding: "You know, they do walk among us on earth. They have to
transform first into a physical body, which is very painful for them.
But they do it out of love. They are here to tell us that we're all
interconnected in some way. Everything is."
At a basic level, Dr. Clancy concludes, alien abduction stories give
people meaning, a way to comprehend the many odd and dispiriting things
that buffet any life, as well as a deep sense that they are not alone
in the universe. In this sense, abduction memories are like
transcendent religious visions, scary and yet somehow comforting and,
at some personal psychological level, true.
So maybe bullshit is too harsh a word for people's belief that they've
been abducted or visited by aliens. There can be a rational
psychological explanation for the mind's propensity to manufacture a
false reality. What remains bullshit is others' attempts to cash in on
these beliefs, fleecing trusting credulous people with flim flam and
E.T. hokum. Dr. Clancy's book is titled
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/0674018796/lexiphane.com-20/103-7277903-3623016"
target=_blank">Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were
Kidnapped By Aliens.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:28 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AMERICA'S LONGEST "WAR" BASED ON LIES
John Tierney has what could be an annual column in The New York
Times if he just wanted to substitute the names of certain drugs
for others. It's an old story, but one that people never seem to tire
of or become less credulous towards: substance X poses a mortal threat
to our nation, turning legions of otherwise decent citizens into
mindless zombies while criminal enterprises subvert our entire way of
life. This news cycle the culprit is methamphetamines, whereas a few
months ago it was OxyContin. For every imagined violation of civil
liberties and privacy laws attributed to the Patriot Act, one could
find thousands of actual erosions of liberty attributable to our 40-
year-old "War on Drugs." And the fuel to keep that neverending law
enforcement quagmire burning is the steady introduction of new and
scary drugs that are going to drag us all kicking and screaming into an
oblivion of addiction. Tierney
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/opinion/09tierney.html?"
target=_blank">points out the absurdity of the latest attempt to
paint methamphetamines as a serious threat:
Amphetamines can certainly do harm and are a fad in
some places. But there's little evidence of a new national epidemic
from patterns of drug arrests or drug use. The percentage of high
school seniors using amphetamines has remained fairly constant in the
past decade, and actually declined slightly the past two years.Nor is meth diabolically addictive. If an addict is someone who has
used a drug in the previous month (a commonly used, if overly broad,
definition), then only 5 percent of Americans who have sampled meth
would be called addicts, according to the federal government's National
Survey on Drug Use and Health.That figure is slightly higher than the addiction rate for people who
have sampled heroin (3 percent), but it's lower than for crack (8
percent), painkillers (10 percent), marijuana (15 percent) or
cigarettes (37 percent). Among people who have sampled alcohol, 60
percent had a drink the previous month, and 27 percent went on a binge
(defined as five drinks on one occasion) during the
month.
Under the guise of the Prohibition against many non-approved drugs,
police forces around the country have transformed themselves from
officers of the peace to heavily armed commando squads that bash down
citizens' doors in hopes of finding large amounts of cash or other
property that can be confiscated to fund further misadventures in
policing private behavior. If authorities were conducting the same
number of middle-of-the-night no-knock raids on suspected terrorists in
the U.S. as they do in an attempt to halt the drug trade, the outrage
from all sorts of groups would be deafening. But the government along
with the mainstream media continues to gin up scary excuses and false
drug epidemics to keep us involved in the neverending and losing
proposition of Prohibition.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:44 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 8, 2005
COMPLETELY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE
Peter Jennings passed away this weekend at the age of 67. High up in
his
obituary in The Washington Post, they note something that
I supposed is meant to be memorable about the man.
Twenty-nine years later, Jennings was on the air within
minutes after two airliners crashed into the World Trade Center on
Sept. 11. He stayed on the air for more than 12 consecutive hours, part
of 60 hours of airtime for him that first week, ABC News said in its
biography of the anchor. His steadiness and "Herculean" work during
that period was widely praised."We watched Peter Jennings' beard grow, and we were somehow reassured
that he did not shave, that through morning, afternoon, evening and on
into the night, he did not leave the desk, that he confided in us his
uncertainties, that he shared the confusions of each hour," Washington
Post columnist Marc Fisher wrote. "He grew more pale and more
vulnerable, as if he knew that we needed him to be human, so that we
could be together."During that devastating day, as all activity stopped and Americans were
[sic] trademark cool
glued to their televisions, Jennings's
warmed as he faltered just a bit.
It's interesting that Jennings' on-air presence and lack of facial
grooming are considered a vital part of that day or his performance
might be likened to Walter Cronkite the day JFK was assasinated. I
watched tv for about 90 seconds that day and maybe 10 minutes that
whole week. I was spending a lot of time in the office and running
around I guess. Watching tv seems like the last thing I would have
wanted to do.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:20 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 7, 2005
PERSISTANCE OF THE TROUBLES, TECH VARIETY
I knew it was too good to be true. The Lexiphane.com rebuild was as
fragile as that teetering Jenga tower I compared it to earlier and now
it seems to be collapsing in slow motion before my eyes. I suspect the
culprit is a corruption of the underlying database and I've found the
best solution for such a problem is a complete purge of my server files
and then total reinstallation. I'm not sure if that's how I want to
spend my Sunday. We'll see. Sorry for any inconvenience caused by the
tantalizing reappearance of the site after a two-month hiatus.
Posted by Lexiphane at 12:30 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 5, 2005
ADMIRAL'S ROW TO BE CASHIERED OUT OF BROOKLYN
The
href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=100+flushing+ave.+brooklyn+ny&spn=0
.021573,0.040280&hl=en" target=_blank">south edge of the Brooklyn Navy
Yard is bordered by Flushing Ave., along which stands a series of
formerly stately homes known as Admiral's Row. The stretch was used as
officers' quarters, with homes that date back more than a century.
The
WPA Guide to New York City, published in 1939, describes
Admiral's Row as it appeared more than 65 years ago.
At the south end, facing Flushing Avenue are the
officers' quarters, two-story buildings of painted brick, scrupulously
neat despite their age (some were built before the Civil War), and
bordered by gardens, tennis courts, and carefully kept
walks.
The houses on Admiral's Row were used until the 1970s, when they were
abandoned and left to decay. The buildings now are crumbling and said
to be beyond repair, although a Fort Greene historic society wants the
Row to be preserved.
href="http://www.officersrow.org/exteriors/inside_exteriors.html"
target=_blank">Pictures show the properties completely overrun with
shrubs, trees, and other growth that seems hard to conceive of in
property just a few blocks from the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.
Demolition for Admirals' Row
href="http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=52553"
target=_blank">seems imminent.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation wants to
acquire the land from the federal government, then demolish the houses
and replace them with industrial buildings, which they say will help
create more manufacturing jobs.
Admiral’s Row lacks landmark status, which would save it from
destruction. Borough President Marty Markowitz and the local community
board have already approved the land transfer.
The WPA Guide has many more interesting things to say about the area
around the Navy Yard, which may come as a surprise to those that are
now gentrifying DUMBO and the surrounding streets.
The Navy Yard District, spreading south and west of the
yard from the East River, is a shapeless grotesque neighborhood, its
grimy cobblestone thoroughfares filled with flophouses, crumbling
tenements and greasy restaurants. It is bounded on the west by the
Manhattan Bridge; while beyond the dull waters of the East River looms
the New York sky line, like the backdrop of a stage set. In the
nineteenth century the region was a residential district known as Irish
Town, because of the predominantly Irish population. After the turn of
the century, business and industry took over parts of the neighborhood
and the pleasant homes fell into neglect. The population now is largely
composed of laborers from local factories and the Navy Yard.
Sands Street is the principal thoroughfare, extending westward from the
Navy Yard to the head of Brooklyn Bridge. Once this street, with its
saloons and gambling dens, came close to establishing itself as New
York's "Barbary Coast," and during the Prohibition era parts of it were
patrolled to keep Navy men away. Today Sands Street still caters to
sailors and Navy Yard workers.
Irish Town was also named--and today referred to as--Vinegar Hill,
named after the
href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/state/nations/irish_reb_06.shtml"
target=_blank">site of a battle in south-east Ireland during that
country's 1798 rebellion against England. The rebels were routed that
day by 20,000 English soldiers and Protestant and Catholic Irishmen
fighting side by side suffered brutal retributions. Kevin Walsh of
forgotten-ny.com
target=_blank">made a trip to Brooklyn's Vinegar Hill a few years
ago that features some nice pictures.
Unfortunately, I believe much has been lost in the areas surrounding
the Navy Yard over the years. Another description from the WPA
Guide:
Near the garden of the commandant's house, and at
several other points, are guns and trophies captured in the Spanish-
American War. At the Sands Street entrance, in the triangular plot
known as Trophy Park, a simple marble shaft commemorates twelve
American seamen who were killed in 1856 in a battle at Canton, China.
At the base of the monument are guns seized with the British frigate
Macedonian during the War of 1812, and also the iron prow of a
Confederate ship captured during the Civil War.
Looking at the maps I have of the area, it appears that the spot where
Trophy Park was located is now occupied by the Farragut Housing
Projects. We planned on being down in that general area tomorrow for
the
href="http://www.gothamist.com/food/archives/2004/08/10/chili_crabs_wha
t_chili_crabs.php" target=_blank">Singapore Chili Crab Festival (
href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=66+water+st.+brooklyn+ny&ll=40.7028
95,-73.991547&spn=0.010787,0.020140&hl=en" target=_blank">Water St.,
between Dock and Main Sts.; noon to 6pm), but may make a more
circuitous route to the waterfront in order to check out and take
pictures of the places described above. I'm especially curious to see
what's become of Sands St., formerly filled with "saloons and gambling
dens."
UPDATE: Corie of
target=_blank">callalie.com was nice enough to leave the first
comment on this item detailing some of the things that I would and
wouldn't be able to see when investigating Admirals' Row. It seems she
would know, because her site has a
href="http://www.callalillie.com/archives/brooklyn_navy_yard/index.html
" target=_blank">good number of entries and some incredible
photographs of the row of former officers' quarters on Flushing
Ave. at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I took a few pictures this weekend,
but none near the quality or depth of the ones Corie has on her site.
I highly recommend checking them out. And to get a good sense of how
overrun with vegetation the Admirals' Row property has become, here is
href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=270+nassau+st+brooklyn+ny&spn=0.003
501,0.007124&t=k&hl=en" target=_blank">zoomed in view of the site
from GoogleMaps. Admirals' Row is the forested piece of land directly
across Flushing Ave. from the baseball fields. Go ahead and zoom out
from that image to orient how close the property is from the Manhattan
and Brooklyn Bridges.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:52 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 4, 2005
BLOGGER MURDERED IN BASRA
East Village resident Steven C. Vincent was a freelance writer whose
work attracted the attention of publications like National
Review and more recently,
target=_blank">The New York Times. Not content to hide in
the Green Zone or travel with armed handlers, Vincent spent a lot of
time uncovering interesting facets of the ongoing war in Iraq. Last
weekend, the Times published
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/31/opinion/31vincent.html"
target=_blank">an article on its Op-Ed page describing how the
police force in Basra was heavily infiltrated with Islamist extremists
more loyal to their religious leaders than the new civil government.
Vincent accused members of the police force of a series of
assassinations of former Ba'ath Party members.
"No one trusts the police," one Iraqi journalist told
me. "If our new ayatollahs snap their fingers, thousands of police will
jump." Mufeed al-Mushashaee, the leader of a liberal political
organization called the Shabanea Rebellion, told me that he felt that
"the entire force should be dissolved and replaced with people educated
in human rights and democracy."An Iraqi police lieutenant, who for obvious reasons asked to remain
anonymous, confirmed to me the widespread rumors that a few police
officers are perpetrating many of the hundreds of assassinations -
mostly of former Baath Party members - that take place in Basra each
month. He told me that there is even a sort of "death car": a white
Toyota Mark II that glides through the city streets, carrying off-duty
police officers in the pay of extremist religious groups to their next
assignment.
Unhappy that the dual loyalty of much of the police force was exposed
by Vincent, the death car came for him.
Mr. Vincent and Ms. Tuaiz were kidnapped around 7 p.m.
Tuesday on a central street in downtown Basra by at least two men
dressed in police uniforms and driving a police sedan, said a witness
who spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing retribution.Mr. Vincent's body was found late Tuesday less than three miles north
of the city center. He had been shot three times in the chest, a
hospital official said, and the body was dumped in the street. His
hands were tied in front with plastic wire; there were bruises on his
face and right shoulder, and a strand of red tape that had apparently
been used to blindfold him hung loosely around his
neck.
Vincent's death stands apart from the deaths of other journalists in
Iraq, who may have been killed by accident or because they were
Western. He was targeted and assassinated specifically because of what
he was writing about, the rise of a militant theocracy in southern Iraq
that was turning democratic reform of Iraqi society into a movement to
create an Islamist theocracy.
In
the Red Zone: A Journey Into the Soul of Iraq is a book Steven
Vincent published last year after his first trip to the war zone. His
blog can be found
href="http://spencepublishing.typepad.com/in_the_red_zone/"
target=_blank">here and is full of very interesting material. A
collection of his pieces published by National Review is
listed here. He is survived by his wife
Lisa Ramaci.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:07 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 3, 2005
YOUR TAX DOLLARS THROWN INTO NY HARBOR
src="http://www.lexiphane.com/mt/archives/harbortunnel.gif" width="400"
height="285" />
Psst buddy, wanna buy a bridge? How about a tunnel? Here's $100
million to
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/nyregion/03rail.html?"
target=_blank">help you think about it. That's basically the
approach that
target=_blank">Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) is taking to get someone
to think about building a tunnel that no one seems to want. The recent
transportation bill that Congress regurgitated onto the country is
jammed with pork as usual, but this seems to go beyond the pale. $100
million is being given to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
to design and engineer a cross-harbor freight tunnel that would run
from New Jersey to Brooklyn, ostensibly eliminating truck traffic
across Manhattan and some Brooklyn neighborhoods.
Usually, news of such largesse would be cause for
celebration. But the Port Authority did not ask for the $100 million,
says it did not know about the grant, and is not very interested in the
project.
"For us to say that we're committed at this point in time and can
commit any funds to it would be premature," the authority's executive
director, Kenneth J. Ringler Jr., said this week.
To complicate matters, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a sharp reversal,
has come out against the project, citing the objections of residents in
and around Maspeth, Queens, where a freight terminal would be built.
Other uninterested parties are George Pataki and Richard Codey, the
Governors of New York and New Jersey, respectively. So never mind that
few people aside from Rep. Nadler are that gung-ho about a project that
even if greenlit today would not be completed by a decade and cost
taxpayers approximately $5-$8 billion. Let's blow a chunk of change on
thinking about it anyway! What's $100 million between friends?
Posted by Lexiphane at 12:09 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 2, 2005
OH, MY, GOD, BECKY, LOOK AT THIS AD CAMPAIGN. IT'S JUST SO . .
The New York Post has an
href="http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/51256.htm"
target=_blank">amusing article today about a dust-up over a new
campaign by retailer
href="http://www.target.com/gp/homepage.html/601-9199447-7152934"
target=_blank">Target to sell schoolkids backpacks. The
commercials adapted Sir Mix-a-Lot's paean to
href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=callipygian"
target=_blank">callipygian appreciation:
href="http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/sirmixalot/babygotback.html"
target=_blank">"Baby Got Back". The Post makes it out
like the song was very controversial when it first debuted, and perhaps
it was just the age cohort I was in at the time (1992), but I found the
song more silly and hilarious than racy. Although there's no denying
that Seattle's Sir Mix-a-Lot was pushing the boundaries of the day:
I want 'em real thick and juicy
So find that juicy double
Mix-a-Lot's in trouble
Beggin' for a piece of that bubble
He's talking about women's asses, by the way. Thirteen years later,
big box retailer Target thought it would be a good idea to resurrect
the song and adapt it for the pre-teen set by changing the lyrics to
"Baby Got Backpack", just in time for the back-to-school rush.
The commercial features young kids dancing around in their
backpacks to the carefully rewritten 1992 frat hit. Chances are the
target audience won't get the reference, but their parents may be
humming, "My anaconda don't want none unless you've got buns,
hon."
If this generation-crossing campaign winds up being a success for
Target, clearly the next step will be to produce a commercial touting
the company's athletic footwear for kids featuring an adaptation of
another Sir Mix-a-Lot classic that they could title
href="http://www.lyrics007.com/Sir%20Mix-A-
Lot%20Lyrics/Put%20'Em%20on%20the%20Glass%20Lyrics.html"
target=_blank">"Put 'Em on the Grass".
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:31 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
PHAIR PLAY AT JOE'S PUB
src="http://www.lexiphane.com/mt/archives/lizphair.jpg" width="400"
height="171" />
Liz Phair plays the second and final performance of a pair of acoustic
sets at Joe's
Pub tonight, including a trio of songs off her forthcoming album.
Phair got a lot of heat regarding her
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/B00009OOH9/qid=1123017818/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl15/103-7277903-
3623016?v=glance&s=music&n=507846" target=_blank">last album's pop
orientation. While I never bought it, I thought what I heard sounded
good and didn't understand some people's negative reaction to the
album. Apparently, some people thought she was a sell out for making
music with a little more mass appeal than her darker earlier days. But
come on, Phair is a 38-year-old woman with a child and a fairly stable
life. People still want to see her writing songs about her being
raped?
"Every night we play a challenge song, which is one we
might have rehearsed and then one hack job where we just do our best,"
she said. With its acoustic setting and reach-back into her oeuvre, the
tour should be a crowd pleaser, which is something Ms. Phair has not
been spending much career time on. Her last record, self-titled, but
radio ready, drew particularly visceral criticism."Hating, I can understand," she said. "I hate stuff too. I can get with
that. But some of it is personal and weird. I don't like being
approached by people who look at me too intensely, who needed something
from me that I didn't have. I don't represent anything. I am just like
you and everyone else. I am trying to live my life as best I
can."
The New York Times has an
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/arts/music/02phai.html"
target=_blank">interesting profile of Phair today, including an
audio feature. Tickets for tonight's 9 p.m. show appear to be sold
out.
Posted by Lexiphane at 5:12 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
UNINTELLIGENT DESIGN FOR EDUCATION
Somedays, President Bush proves himself to be the knucklehead everyone
assumes him to be, although I think that characterization is
overplayed. Today, however,
href="http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050802/pl_afp/usbu
shscience_050802165740" target=_blank">not so much.
During a round-table interview Monday with reporters
from several US newspapers, Bush said that alongside traditional views
about the origin of life, science instructors should teach intelligent
design, which says random genetic mutations, central to Charles
Darwin's theory of natural selection were, in fact, guided by God's
hand.
Intelligent design, or ID, is not even a competing theory of
evolutionary development, as its proponents like to present it. It is
not an alternative to the theory of evolution through natural
selection. Theory's must present facts and work them into a framework
that can be supported or disproved. ID is nothing more than a
criticism of the theory of natural selection. It presents no
evidence like fossils or geological timelines. Instead, it finds these
bits of evidence insufficient and so posits the hand of God must have
played some role in evolution. That's a very poetic thought, but it's
not a scientific theory that belongs in the classroom. We could just
as easily say that we find the theory of evolution insufficient and
demand that schools start teaching the Scientoligist position that
humans were deposited here by some whacked-out space alien several
million years ago and our bodies are invested with parasitic space
beings called thetans. Ridiculous, you say? Of course it is. On this
particular instance, I will have to agree that President Bush is indeed
a moron.
Posted by Lexiphane at 4:54 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 1, 2005
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS NOTEBOOK?
src="http://www.lexiphane.com/mt/archives/moleskine.jpg" width="300"
height="300" />
Last seen 10 p.m. Saturday evening in a yellow cab on Houston and 2nd
Ave. Three-quarters filled with inane ramblings and inarticulate note-
taking, with the occasional names and phone numbers interspersed
throughout. It's a ruled Moleskine, 3.5" by 5.5", with my name, phone
number and e-mail addresses listed in the front along with the offer of
a reward if returned. Completely worthless to anyone but the owner.
If one sees this fugitive repository of arcana, feel free to contact us
here at Lexiphane.com. Thanks will be profuse.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:04 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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