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The Nobel commission announced that Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in economics. Krugman won for his work on “the effects of free trade and globalisation and the driving force behind worldwide urbanization” as reported by the BBC.
On this side of the Pond we know and love Krugman for being one of the only public figures with the courage to stand up to Bush, Cheney, and Rove’s palpable lies when they were selling us the Iraq War and selling us (and our children and grandchildren) into debt.
Congratulations professor Krugman!
With the economy making us all feel like it’s Halloween 24/7 out there, let’s look a little closer at NYC’s 365 Halloween and costume headquarters, Halloween Adventure, located at 104 4th Ave near Union Square. This store has managed to stick around for 16 years, growing and expanding to serve the needs of freaks, geeks, Goths, nerds, fetishists, exhibitionists and party-goers all year round. I’d like to say I just went to the store and observed the employees and customers, studiously taking notes and watching them from afar like some urban Serengeti journalist, but alas, that would be a lie. For you see, I am a casualty of these scary economic times, and as a means of self-preservation I took a job there so that I could have a reason to get up and out of the apartment in the morning, instead of obsessing over my non-existent career and meeting with yet another headhunter who is unable to get me a job earning a living wage. So I thought, “Why not see if I can find a seasonal job selling costumes for Halloween? They MUST be hiring.” And that’s exactly what I did. I put on my gothiest outfit and did my gothiest make-up and went down and got myself a job. So here are some of my findings thus far:
1) The economy is bad, but people’s escapist tendencies are in full swing. Even though the store says it’s figures are down from last year, the place does HUGE business. I happen to think that this is going to be the last BIG Halloween for a while, for 2 reasons:
A) Halloween is on a Friday this year. Parties all weekend! More parties = more costumes.
B) This is the last year regular, non-trust-fund, non-Wall Street people are going to be able to cling to the illusion that they have enough disposable income to blow hundreds of dollars on a costume and a night out for a pagan holiday (with economic depressions come piousness. Why is that??? Rhetorical: I’m familiar with the concept that God favors the good with prosperity.) Most costumes start off at around $50 and go up from there. A decent one is gonna run you closer to $100. And rentals are about $200. Even with my employee discount my costume came to $65. And that’s not counting the special modifications and additions I need to make to it or all the drinks that will be consumed.
2) No matter what the weather is like, girls wanna dress like hoochies on Halloween. It is the one day in our culture when women are expected and encouraged to wear as little as possible (We all know the “slutty” thing. You’re not just a nurse, you’re a slutty nurse. You’re not just Marie Antionette, you’re slutty Marie Antionette). This is NYC, folks, not Miami. And this year is shaping up to be a cooooolllllldddd Halloween! I’m working down in the “Adult” costumes and lemme tell ya, these girls can’t find outfits SHORT enough. Except if they’re hispanic and come in with their b/fs. Those guys practically want their g/fs in gorilla costumes. I thought these guys would love to have their girls show off their goodies! With all the white couples the guys wanted their g/fs to dare to bare as much as legally possible; with the hispanic guys, not so much. These guys don’t want their g/fs to look like hos, and they tell them so. Some more forcefully than others.
3) We don’t get a lot of requests for political or current events costumes down in the “Adult” costumes. Maybe it’s just that the political masks are readily found upstairs, or maybe people just aren’t doing the McCain/Obama/Palin thing this year. I’ve heard they’re selling fairly well, I just haven’t seen it. People tend to stick to the archetypes: Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Pirate, Queen, King, etc. My fave this year is Beer Garden Wench. V cute, and you get to try to get your b/f to do a couples costume, and for him that means lederhosen. Priceless.
4) And lastly, the biggest hooligans like the sexy cop uniforms. Go figure.
So enjoy this last big Halloween. Party likes it’s 1999. Because this may be the last good time we collectively have for a while. I’m even predicting a quiet New Year’s Eve this year. It’s scary out there!
This guy can't believe Palin's nerve.
Right now — today, October 5th, 2008 — the world is deciding to quit believing in a brighter future and start hoarding white rice and gasoline. The Dow Jones is down 700 points at the time of this writing, and European shares had their biggest one day drop ever.
If you want to see how bad it can be, check out this web lecture by Chris Martenson. If we contract to pre-bubble levels, we’re looking at Dow 6,000 — and the way things are going today that might not be too far off.
Are you on Facebook? (If you’re not, you’re probably too old to be reading this.) Join our fan club!
Lou Dobbs makes me laugh! He’s so funny! He said tonight on CNN that the markets should be allowed to take care of themselves! Abso-smurfly Mr Dobbs! Just like Herbert Hoover said in 1929! We’re all just a bunch of old rugged individualists in here! Pullin’ ourselves up by our bootstraps!
I said in an earlier post that the Repubs might have scored some political points for — once again — being the only party that will stand up for what it believes in. Sadly what they believe in is wide spread unemployment, a run on banks, and if we’re really lucky a civil war.
Alabama Congressman Richard Shelby
They won’t be able to just admit they were wrong.
They won’t be able to admit that took the idea of a self-regulating free market on faith. Or that a misplaced faith in their intellectual powers was all they ever had. They won’t be able to admit that reality is more complex than their simple, moralistic ideologies can handle. And yet it looks like the Freemarket Fundamentalists might actually score some political points from the financial crisis.
Who is responsible for the credit crisis that is ripping through American and foreign financial markets like a spasms through an epileptic? It’s like asking who is responsible for the torture at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib. If you’re still one of the faithful, it was all the work of a few bad apples and not a massive systemic failure that is bound to happen cyclicly until the end of time — or until real reforms are implemented. But conservatives don’t believe in reform. They believe in human nature. They believe the eschaton is coming. They know Evil will be with us until it’s final, apocalyptic showdown with Good.
In the meantime, Democrats only got about 55% of their due political realigment out of this once-in-a-lifetime political opportunity.
Chapter 3:
Sunday, 9/21: The Golden Pastie Awards Show at SOB’s
By J.D. Oxblood
Photos by DJ 13
Helen Pontani, Angie Pontani, Jen Gapay
Needless to say (but I’m gonna say it anyway), I stayed up till 7 in the freaking morning with miscreants and derelicts, and Sunday had a hangover the size of Wisconsin and could. Not. Believe that I was going to look at more T&A. Is there no limit to what a man can endure? Someone has to do it, folks, and that man is me.
The single greatest thing about Sunday’s Golden Pastie Awards was that the audience was full of performers. All the great, hot, sexy women that I’d been drooling over all weekend were there, in the crowd, with the scumbag likes of me. What’s hotter than watching hot women with a bunch of hot women?
Chapter 2:
Saturday, 9/20: the Saturday Spectacular at Le Poisson Rouge
By J.D. Oxblood
Photos by T-Bone Caruthers, Willy G., and Jane Smith
Ruby Valentine
[***3 kisses indicate J.D.’s faves.]
The crowd at the Saturday Spectacular was decidedly older and more well-heeled. And completely sold out. Turns out that getting people to the West Village is easier than getting people to Gowanus—who knew?—and the place was weirdly, if not wisely, laid out to accommodate VIPs at tables close to the stage and standing room only everywhere else. Which is to say that if you didn’t pay the tab or have the connections to score a dope seat, you couldn’t get within fifty feet of the stage. My entourage and I were lucky enough to find a quaint little spot wedged in between the exit door and upstage left, putting us in the path of performers entering from stage left (Trixie Little rubbed up against me! I’ll never wash that shoulder!) and I had the added pleasure of having Jo Boobs sit right in front of me for the first act in her civvies. It isn’t just that she’s so hot, you dig?—like any man, I can get hot pushed in close to a middle-aged Puerto Rican woman on the morning G train—but, this woman is, like, a legend. You can feel it steaming off her. And I am honored to be so close.
Chapter 1:
Friday, 9/19: Premiere Party at the Bell House
By J.D. Oxblood
Photos by Jane Smith
The Love Show
[***3 kisses indicate J.D.’s faves.]
I showed up early and was hit in the face by the smell of wood varnish. The space is brand spanking new and I can’t really figure out why they opened a venue of this size in this location. It’s Gowanus, people, which sounds like something you get from raggedy chicks on Craigslist and might very well be. The walk from the elevated F/G stop at Smith and 9th was like a descent into something from Dante’s imagination. Or Cleveland. You choose. And this joint is the kind of high-ceiling, wooden beam affair where you expect to see moose heads on the wall. And the crowd in the lounge? These are the kinds of guys that make you ashamed to be an American—guys who are used to yelling at each other in somebody’s kitchen. They still reek of Bolognese sauce. They’re so psyched to have a bar in their neighborhood they might never go home. Fortunately, the big room was, in fact, very big, so it was possible to get close to the performers. The crowd was mixed and fairly young—those brave enough to make the trek to Gowanus—with an extra helping of young dudes rubbing up against their young babes with the unbridled optimism of knowing they’ll have something to do with their boners when the show is over. Ah, the fantasy of a threesome. Girls, don’t be upset that your boy isn’t thinking about you; just be glad it’s you he’s fucking. The first two gogo dancers were, um, not much of dancers and less of gogo, but they were soon replaced by a smokin’ hot black girl with Supremes sensibilities, and a big, fleshy redhead who was so generous in spreading her ass for the crowd that I considered trying to take her home and skip the whole damn festival. It would take the entire weekend to work THAT out.
THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE %*&#! COVERAGE OF THE 6TH ANNUAL NEW YORK BURLESQUE FESTIVAL ANYWHERE ON THE INTERWEB!
Roxy Dlight Friday at the Bell House
(Sound of Alka Seltzer plop plop fizz fizzing. A Zippo lighter clicks, lights, clicks shut. Venetian blinds are drawn. J.D.’s voice is heard; a voice scarred by cigarettes, Hendricks Gin, and late, late nights of carousing with half-naked… er, people.)
If I sound exhausted it’s because I am. Tore up from the floor up. Shredded like my mini-wheats without the frosting. My four-day stubble has four-day stubble. My front room is knee-deep in beer and whiskey. I think I may have seen too many boobies. Let me say that again. I think I may have seen too many boobies. The last time I saw that much flesh it was Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Katrina was just the name of a sweet young girl from Kansas who took a left turn at Albuquerque.
You gotta hand it to Angie Pontani—the lady knows how to throw a party. Four days, four venues, eighty-eight acts by my count—adds up to well over a hundred performers—and so much hotness the Devil himself had to go back home to cool off. My knees ache from standing at attention, my [unmentionable] aches from standing at attention, my feet are swollen, my fingers are nicotine- and ink-stained, my lungs are crying out for non-nicotine-flavored air, my liver has straight-up packed its bags and left me—AND it took the dog—my sinuses are about to fall to the floor and I’m pretty sure I raised the GNP of Columbia this weekend. I’ve given out a dozen fake names, and at least four other people have claimed to be me in the hopes of getting free schwag, which basically adds up to a half dozen people thinking they had sex with J.D. Oxblood this weekend, or a half dozen people who don’t know they had sex with J.D. Oxblood this weekend, depending on your point of view. Murray, I told you, that’s confectioner’s sugar, it’s Monday morning, and you need to get the hell out of my bathtub. Anita, you can stop acting drunk, it’s over. Let me call you a car, and yes, I’ll call you. Purrhaps. Scotty, I meant everything I said and at least half of what we did, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.
Hello again friends. Your humble political observateur here. I busted out my lab equipment again so’s I can drop some science on you. Political science that is.
McCain and Co. was hoping an August surprise with Mrs. Sarah Palin would put momentum in their full court press. And I’ll bet you Cheney was (maybe still is) planning an October surprise wherein Iran “fires” on US warships in the Gulf and we respond by righteously invading their country.
Unfortunately for the fantasy-based community, reality, courtesy of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, has given us a September surprise to shake up the presidential contest. Yesterday the Dow components lost almost 450 points or 4%, in one day. The loss since the close on 9/11 last week is over EIGHT HUNDRED POINTS (800 pts.). You read that right. EIGHT HUNDRED POINTS. That’s a lot — just over 7% of it’s value in three days. That means people who know a thing or two about which way the wind is blowing are scared out of their wits and are heading for the exits. What color is your parachute?
By J.D. Oxblood Hunter College, Friday night, September 12, a perfect way to recover from lingering Sept. 11 syndrome -- and the endless exploitation of a day hallowly remembered -- roller derby! Hot chicks on wheels! Well maybe, just maybe, some of you slackers out in cyberspace are actually reading these missives, as the Friday night bout was sold out. Folks lined up for hours (well, ok, an hour) just to get a glimpse of the Gotham Girls giving their all with guts and grit. The gym was packed, energy was high, and the all-around theme of the night was just like my last date: hot and sweaty. Read the rest of this entry »
The only thing Obama and Biden should talk about is the culture of corruption that is endemic to conservative politics.
Thass right y’all, you heard me say it. People who voluntarily call themselves “conservative” are lowlife scum looking to get one over on tax payers. Earl E. Devaney sez so. (OK. Technically he says that Bush appointees to the Department of the Interior are lowlife scum who use your money to buy cocaine and whores. But come on. We all know that if a thorough investigation of the entire executive branch was conducted no one would get out of jail free.)
This means you Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
Ok, so this is ridiculously late, but I had a friend in town and then a job interview, so sue me. So let’s get down to it. First of all, please note that it is super hard for me to report on the RNC objectively, what with all the Christian fundamentalist war-mongering and all. That tends to push my buttons, ya know? My dad lives in Nashville and TN happens to be a big ol’ red state. He tells me horror stories about how sometimes his friends, while seemingly intelligent, thinking human beings, at times will correct him when he’s referring to archeological digs and/or scientific carbon dating. For you see, the earth, according to these zealots, is between 6-10,000 years old, which essentially puts humans, dinosaurs, trilobytes, and all that crap we studied in geology and biology in the same epoch. And they maintain that Noah couldn’t fit the dinosaurs on the Ark so that’s why they died out. Which all prompted me to create this design for a t-shirt (it’s copyrighted, so don’t even try it):
The Dinosaurs Killed Jesus
Hello, all you CC readers! I hope you have been following the DNC as avidly as I. Overall it was an exciting convention. The stellar speeches filled with pithy barbs! Billary, for chrissakes! And last, but definitely not least, the freakin’ Denver Boroncos Dem-packed stadium, replete with stoic columns to frame our man O in an austere, presidential manner. It was hot hot hot!
“No way. No how. No McCain.” – HRC
G train, 8:30 a. m. 9/2/08
The state legislature and the MTA need to wake up and smell the overcrowding on all New York City transit. The crosstown G — the only line that doesn’t run into Manhattan — has been sorely neglected its whole life. And now the state is saying that the budget shortfall means cuts, higher fares, and worse service. Don’t they know that the biggest build out the the system was during the Great Depression?
Maybe they do. But the real problem is a lack of organization in transit advocacy groups to put real pressure on Albany to invest heavily in NYC transit. First, kick Sheldon Silver out of the legislature, and second make sure all the other reps know they’re next on the hit list if they drag their feet on funding a massive MTA overhaul.
Sarah Palin is conservative eye candy.
Why did McCain pick her? Because she will be the ultimate Miss Moneypenny to his James Bond. She’s clever, hot, and most definitely subordinate to The Man. She is the ideal conservative VP: a totally bangable chick whose only job is to be a foil to highlight the masculinity of the Great Leader.
The New York Times is running a story today about the difficulty of getting alternative energy (in this case wind energy) to market. Mr. Wald locates the problem here:
The power grid is balkanized, with about 200,000 miles of power lines divided among 500 owners. Big transmission upgrades often involve multiple companies, many state governments and numerous permits. Every addition to the grid provokes fights with property owners.
This sounds a lot like the classic modernist narrative Le Corbusier gives in The City of Tomorrow:
Man walks in a straight line because he has a goal and knows where he is going; he has made up his mind to reach some particular place and he goes straight to it. The pack-donkey meanders along, meditates a little in his scatter-brained and distracted fashion, he zigzags in order to avoid the larger stones, or to ease the climb, or to gain a little shade; he takes the line of least resistance.
It is also the capitalist, freemarketeer’s main argument against preservation — and, by the way, environmentalism. Speed and economies of scale are assumed by the capitalist to be fundamental to survival. In high school debate this is the “Growth Is Good” argument.
“I am a daredevil, in the great tradition of the greatest daredevil of all time, Evil Knevel. I’m a rebel, Dottie, a loner.”
Check it out! Check it out! Check it out! Big up mah main lady of the unemployment line — Eve’l Knevel and her rad new blog on living in NYC sans travail.
So far being free isn’t just another word for nothing left to lose:
“Hello all you burdens to society! It’s another gorgeous day of being unemployed in the city. Yesterday I covered the super-fun mandatory trip to the Dept. of Labor. Today I’d like to help you take on the overwhelming inertia that inevitably consumes the long-term unemployed. It is a matter of fact that, when given all the time in the world to pursue hobbies, better ourselves, and use this paid, totally free free time, most of us will slip into the giant vortex of inactivity that only boatloads of unstructured time can bring. At first, after the shock and anger of losing your job wears off, unemployment is fun. It’s a blast! Holy crap, I have all the time to do WHATEVER I FREAKIN’ WANT!”
We can’t wait to see how she’s doing at Christmas!
Even better, she’s literatti from the old school. Get a taste of her tastes:
“I got all teary-eyed getting to see John Doe and Exene Cervanka, idols from my youth from the band X, playing on stage. I was just a tiny little pre-punk rocker when I first heard their plaintive, discordant tones. I went batshit for their band, X. They didn’t sound like anything else I had ever heard. Punk, but folks-y. I later heard the term cowpunk, and that seemed about right. And I’d always followed John Doe’s acting career (He was Pat McGurn, sleazy bartender, in Roadhouse, for chrissakes. Roadhouse! Another classic. I told you my definition of “the classics” may not match your own).”
We here at CC hope you read her stuff and enjoy!
This is a drawing from a NY Times piece on the artistic genius of architects. I know many of you — my friends — are architects. But I have to say, when it comes to raw hubris, not even Richard Cheney can beat an architect (or their groupies).
Ayn Rand
As CC’s intrepid reporter J. D. Oxblood just pointed out, New York City cops ain’t too bright. But it turns out (and this is no surprise) that the problem doesn’t stop at the street.
The New York Times is reporting that the city decided to settle a law suit from 2003 for two million dollars. The suit claimed wrongful arrest: the cops swept the street to crush any sign of political dissent, made mass arrests that imprisoned innocent passersby, and in the end, after deciding to settle out of court rather than face a trial, the cops refused to apologize. (Sounds a little like how they recruited inmates for Gitmo.)
It would be easy (and correct) to blame this gross infringement of our rights and liberties on Guiliani, the Republicans (Mayor Mike, that means you too), and the nasty political culture of hate and fear that has been allowed to flower since Reagan announced it was morning in America. Ann Coulter should serve the same amount of time in jail for undermining respect for political dissent in this country that those 52 innocents had to spend for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Even a couple of days times 52 is a lot). As Ahmad Shirazi, 70, one of those arrested said:
… as he was being handcuffed for the first time in his life, he told the officer that the plastic cuffs were squeezing him. “He said, ‘You should have thought about that before you came out this morning.’ It was like a dagger in my heart, that a police officer of my city would come up with anything like that.”
But in New York City at least we have another Lady who we can look to as justification of our petition to have cops and politicians punished who try to strong arm us into giving up our freedom.
The first great thing I have to say about the New York roller derby scene is this: the Gotham Girls want everyone to come to the party. The pre-party at a bar near the venue was touted on their website — an open invitation — and while I was still patting myself on the back for my uber-super-reporting skills at getting an invite to the after party, I saw the open invitation in the program. You gotta love a bunch of tough girls who want everyone to come and get drunk with them. But here’s the bad news: there’s a reason why you need a “pre” and a “post.” There are no alcoholic beverages served in the basement of Hunter College, and between the metal detectors (read: metal flasks) and the hand searches (read: sniffing water bottles) it’s nigh on impossible to smuggle in booze. And that, my pretties, is the only bad thing I can say about Saturday night’s bout between the Bronx Gridlock and the Queens of Pain.
Are we happy the days of dingy subway stations are gone? (Don’t look at Jay St. — you might think it was the 70s again.) Even if the stations aren’t covered in spray paint, some old-fashioned smart-asses are taking the burden of de-corpratizing the subway on their shoulders to make our commute a little more fun.
This guy was in his clown suit on the L train between 1st Ave. and Bedford. He looked sad. Sad clown. After a hard day of clowning I imagined he was on his way home to his clown wife and clown kids. Probably in Queens.
This is a week late. So what. Sue me.
Some dudes set up a goal outside the courts as West 4th street a week ago, and some random white guy was dunking his heart out, missing most of the time, and incurring the scorn of the Black males watching. (I think the goal fit in the back of the Penske truck in the photo.)
A skeptical audience
Front page news folks!
If you didn’t see it in the comments, our girl Jocelyn over at Rock Star Diary, alerted us to an article in the Greenpoint Gazette that gives more scoop on the Richard Duran killing on July 11.
BUT HERE’S THE NEWS: Why wasn’t the crime scene cleaned up? Because it happened on MTA property. This makes me laugh… the kind of sick, disgusted, sardonic laugh one is likely to cough up at the end of a French noir or an O. Henry story. Or after watching Fox News. No rest for the wicked. No good deed goes unpunished.
The farmer’s market in Union Square is a beautiful thing. It combines street density with sustainable agriculture and a low carbon footprint ’cause you don’t ship the food from corporate farms half a word away. More on farmers’ markets around NYC in future posts!
(For mah peeps living the bohemian novelist’s dream.)
A Moveable Feast is Hemingway’s memoir of life for the young ex-pats who enjoyed the first blush of American global economic dominance in France after the end of the First World War. Though he and Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and John Dos Passos complained about being poor and put on a show of living a bohemian lifestyle, they were all supported by the strength of the US economy and money sent to them from the states. The fact that the French franc was close to trash compared to the dollar supported their artistic ambitions.
This now infamous video is proof that the surveillance state cuts both ways. (Thanks to Shawn for pointing it out.)
My sympathies are obviously with the bikers. For that matter, I never liked cops much. Their job is to go out cruising for trouble. Bad news in my opinion. The only people who should be cops should be the ones who pass a rigorous exam on ethics. But then there wouldn’t be many cops. Or politicians probably.
Bikes need to displace cars in the modern city — absolutely. They need to be sacred cows, so long as they don’t make a habit of running over pedestrians, who are by far the most sacred form of life on and in the street. And cops who make asses of themselves and abuse their power on video should be canned — immediately, no questions asked.
Date #1:
Find yourself in a densely crowded downstairs Latino dance club, trying to find a drunken female friend and her roommate, with whom you were wildly (and unwisely) making out mere moments before. Get a call from a female friend who works in a bar. Miss the call. Get a text from her saying, “Come to the bar. X is single and ready to mingle.” Go outside, find the drunk girls, get them in a cab and wash your hands of it. Retrieve message from the bartender: “Come to the bar now! X just broke up with her boyfriend and is asking about you!”
Grab a cab to the bar even though it’s less than a 10 minute walk. Arrive and kiss your friend and thank her for the tip. Sidle up next to the newly-single, smoking hot, 20 year-old vixen.
(Editor: Be forewarned, the following is a graphic and explicit depiction of sexual acts of dubious legality.)
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