A remnant

Harry Stares It Down

God, the long weekend looms,
a cold spot in the hallway, lonely fullness
of action outside, the flecking
Christmas lights up far too early.

Saturday stretches out like a hungry animal.
It growls: alarm, wake, shower, coffee,
pacing the floorboards until 5pm arrives
and unlocks the liquor cabinet.

Later later later later

Later, a smile stuck stillborn,
Harry doesn’t laugh with
the others at the bar, their jokes.
Like a retarded kid capering, he thinks cruelly.

So, what to do. Only this:
Crush the fucking can, cracked cherrywood
bar and buy another. Good buybacks here.
And mostly, drinking’s better than not.

But then comes
last call and
still there’s Sunday
to stare down, sweet Jesus Sunday,
an arid expanse inhabited only
by twenty-four smirking hours,
an orange light blinking on the percolator.

And when that day’s duly weathered, again it’s:
alarm, wake, shower, coffee, until

work and a blessed white mind
on Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday.
Thursday. Friday.

Dying for the weekends to quit coming.
Too chickenshit to do it.

Bill O'Reilly Is a Horrible Racist

Recently, Bill O'Reilly took the Reverend Al Sharpton out to dinner at Sylvia's, the famous Harlem soul-food restaurant, to thank him (the Rev.) for appearing on The Factor. Here is what that classy fellow Bill had to say about the place:

"It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all."

My god! Can you believe it? Blacks — blacks! — behaving themselves in a restaurant!

O'Reilly went on to add, "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M.F.-er, I want more iced tea.'"

I mean, can you believe it? Who woulda thunk it?

At any rate, Media Matters for America posted a clip of Bill saying the stuff above on its website, thus stirring the pot (appropriately, I might add — I feel like lots of the ridiculous shit O'Reilly says just gets ignored, 'cause he's such a lunatic) and prompting Bill Shine, senior VP for programming at Fox News, to comment, "This is nothing more than left-wing outlets stirring up false racism accusations for ratings. It's sad."

Yeah, it's very sad, isn't it, Bill and Bill? Terribly sad. I mean, here O'Reilly was, trying to give the coloreds credit for behaving themselves in a restaurant, and what happens? The vicious left-wing media attacks him for it. Poor O'Reilly.

That fucker should be fired just like Don Imus. But it won't happen — or it won't happen easily — because it's Fox News.

Flavorslaton Strikes Again

Upcoming goings-on include:

Thursday 9/27 @ Jacques-Imo's: The SugarTone Brass Band
Friday 9/28 @ Webster Hall: Okkervil River
Saturday 10/6 @ Randall's Island: Arcade Fire
Wednesday 10/10 @ Southpaw: The Raveonettes
Friday 10/12 @ JFK: Hunter (ooh ... meta) goes to Japan!
Thursday & Friday 11/1 & 11/2 @ Terminal 5: The Decemberists

Any & all are welcome to attend any & all events!

Nathan Rabin's Year of Flops

I don’t know if any of you out there in TV Land have seen these before, but one and all have to start reading The Onion A.V. Club’s series “My Year of Flops.” Here’s a link to the entry on the movie The Fountain, which made me choke back laughter (“Maybe they figured they could fire Aronofsky right before shooting wrapped and give Hugh Jackman a ...”).

Basically the guy, Nathan Rabin, just reviews the most terrible movies of all time. It’s amazing. Here’s what he had to say about the recent Lindsay Lohan movie Georgia Rule:

“The film’s bizarre tonal left turn from Evening Shade sassiness to emotion-choked family soap opera suggests what Golden Girls might look like if they decided to shut off the laugh track for a three-episode arc illustrating that Rue McLanahan’s geriatric sexual adventurer was raped during college and that all her vamping and lustful one-liners were really a desperate way of overcompensating for not feeling desirable or pure sexually.”

Wow. I mean, that is just a colossus of a sentence. I am in awe. That might be up there as one of the greatest sentences ever, no kidding.

A beautiful paragraph

Herewith, please find a beautiful paragraph from a beautiful story about the parrot named Alex who recently passed away:

Many linguists argue that only human brains have the ability to nest ideas within ideas to form the infinitely recursive architecture of thought: When you’re done eating breakfast would you look in the box at the back of the table for the yellow rubber glove with the middle finger turned inside out?

Man, that's just, wow. I highly recommend the (short) article, which can be found here in The New York Times.

Kid Nation

This Wednesday evening at 8pm is the CBS premiere of Kid Nation, a new series wherein 40 kids aged eight to 15 are left in an abandoned mining town to fend for themselves.

Yes, that's right, it's Survivor but with children. This, I think, has the potential to be one of the best shows ever—maybe even better than Joe Millionaire. Can you imagine the possibilities? What if they form a pudding-based economy? What if they elect a dog president? What if they start eating each other? Man, I hope they start eating each other. I hope it ends up like the Simpsons in which Bart takes over Kamp Krusty, I really do. (I'm fully aware that it won't, but a man can dream, can't he?)

NOBODY NEEDS ANY OF THIS SHIT

The street profiled in this NY Times article is Grand Street, which is about 5 minutes from my apartment. The writer writes that "those looking to find what made this neighborhood [Williamsburg] cool a decade ago need to venture a little farther these days, to Grand Street — where a good-looking mix of old and new restaurants, experimental galleries and girlie boutiques have carved out a more relaxed way to burn through a Saturday."

She then proceeds to take a little tour down Grand, enumerating the best of the street's shops. There's Pop, "an adorable little shop that sells colorful dresses and graphic t-shirts," Armoire, which "serves cold mimosas to members of the local fashion set as they paw at exquisitely crafted silk dresses," and Chopin Chemists, which "looks like an old apothecary shop, but ... sells designer candles like Paddywax ($16.99) and Voluspa ($21.99)."

Adorable ... paw ... fashion set ... designer candles ... (elsewhere in the article) pretty ... popular with laptop users ... storybook ... arty ... splurge ... and so on and so forth.

Just let me ask: when did hipsters completely transform into yuppies? Maybe it's been happening all along, and I haven't just been paying attention, but the smug, self-satisfied consumerism with which this article is shot through makes me SICK TO MY STOMACH. You do not need a goddamn twenty-two-dollar candle. You do not need to burn through your Saturdays. You do not need cold mimosas. To hell with storybook, pretty, arty, splurging and the rest of this nonsense. It's all escapism, it's all worthless and it won't make you happy.

Long time no blog

Hola, amigos. What's goin' on? I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but it's like life keeps raining shit down on me and I don't have a shit shovel big enough to clear it all away.

Anyway, in the news today, CNN's obtained a transcript of the new Bin Laden tape. I think you can also buy it on iTunes for $1.99. Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of Homeland Security, said that "the United States follows a standard procedure to analyze any tapes it receives."

He goes on:

"We review it for authenticity, we review it to see when we think it was made, if it's a single tape or a compilation of outtakes. We look to see if there are overt messages or hidden messages."

A compilation of outtakes? Is that, like, a blooper reel? Or a "best-of" mixtape? Deleted scenes? Alternate endings? I wanna see the one where Bin Laden keeps cracking up when saying the name of Russia's president.