Because Why Not?

New York just seems so incredibly boring and normal I don't know how people there can stand it. They should all move to Los Angeles, where things are interesting...

Booger, Kitty, & Mousey walk the streets of West Hollywood 
and for some reason people stare.

[Thanks for the tip, Videogum]

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Man, I Hope This Kid Gets Raped in Prison

 (Steven Hirsch/AP)

Although he is being referred to as a man by all the news outlet--and he is certainly old enough for the designation, on a technical level--we all know Michael Enright is little more than a punk kid.

To clarify a bit further, he is an arrogant sissy-punk kid who should be put in a whole and never heard from again.

Who is Michael Enright, you ask?

Ask and ye shall receive (Goodtime 13:46):

James Zaleta, an assistant district attorney, said in court that Mr. Enright hailed a taxi near 24th Street and Second Avenue on Tuesday evening. Mr. Enright asked the taxi driver, who was from Bangladesh, whether he was Muslim, Mr. Zaleta said.
After the driver said he was, Mr. Enright responded with the Arabic greeting, “Assalamu alaikum,” according to the criminal court complaint.

Then Mr. Enright said, “Consider this a checkpoint,” before pulling out a Leatherman utility knife and slashing the taxi driver’s throat, Mr. Zaleta said. The driver turned and Mr. Enright slashed him in his face and forearms, Mr. Zaleta said.

(courtesy NYTimes.com)

Don't worry, Teabaggers--your hero already has some crafty big-city lawyer doing his best to get him free after billing as many hours as possible:

Jason A. Martin, Mr. Enright’s lawyer, said his client lived with his parents and was an honor student at the School of Visual Arts, where he is a senior.

Mr. Enright is a volunteer with Intersections International, a nonprofit that works to promote cross-cultural understanding and has spoken out in favor of the proposed Islamic cultural center near ground zero. Mr. Enright, who shuffled into court with a collared T-shirt, cargo shorts and shackles around his ankles, has also worked with veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, Mr. Martin said.

“He’s terrified,” Mr. Martin said of his client. “He’s shocked at the allegations. He’s just trying to cope with it right now.”

(also courtesy NYTimes.com)

He's "shocked at the allegations?" He was caught immediately after leaving the cab--it's not like they were going on a description and picked up some random chubby white dude with orange hair who looks permanently scared.

But, more to the point, who the fuck cares that this little prick is an honor student who lives lived with his parents? Why is this a detail anybody needs to know? All we need to know is that he is now living in prison, where he belongs.

And here's to hoping he stays there for a long time and gets treated to a few serious invasions of privacy every day until he learns his lesson the hard way--DON'T FUCK WITH PEOPLE FOR NO REASON.


Dessert:
It's gotta suck to be this guy right now.

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Be the Envy of the Upper East Side

Get your square watermelon today!

These totally unnecessary items are only $75.00 each and available wherever obscenely wealthy people might actually spend that much on something worth $3.00--New York, Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan.

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Try to Make It Real Compared to What?

I watched Louis Malle's My Dinner With Andre this evening and it of course sent my mind running around its hamster cage at full tilt, leaving me unfit for slumber despite a tiresome day.

And so here I am.

For those of you who have not seen it, the movie is little more than a (monumental) dinner conversation between a struggling playwright (Wallace Shaun) and a wealthy theater director / mystical wanderer (Andre).

If you have seen Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, then just imagine Alan Alda's character as a parody of Andre, although I use that word loosely, since they are both pretty hysterical. I laughed out loud tonight louder than I have at any comedy I can remember, although it was not a comedy. [Note: Bob Odenkirk's interesting Melvin Goes to Dinner also owes a great debt to Andre -Ed.]

Andre is one of those fascinating, might-be-on-to-something, faux-humble, name-dropping emotional yo-yos who seem always to be weeping or getting naked in the woods with strangers, who inevitably mentions how he recently had a total breakdown and realized he was little more than a mindless one-dimensional robot when he was wandering around a desert in Africa for months with four toothless gypsies who subsisted on nothing but sand--because they wished it to be so--and then, in the next breath, tells a long-winded, riveting, story about how everything you are doing is wrong because when he rolled around in the grass in Tibet, imaginary monkeys kissed his nose and whispered a nonsense word and then 6 months later that word showed up as a drawing in a book he was reading to his child in Japanese--since he and his wife are trying to teach their kids Japanese, since a renowned physicist who gave up everything to become a brain-dead psychic once told him they are the future--and the funny thing is, the Tibetan language and Japanese couldn't be farther apart, so the character was probably just a meaningless squiggle to the author, but don't you see how it's all connected?

Wallace Shaun is, appropriately, very much the opposite, in term of temperament and opportunity. He is a struggling artist from working-class NY stock, a short, balding, unattractive man who takes pride in crossing meaningless errands off a list, believes there is still a chance for art to be profound, and who only asks that he not find a roach in his coffee mug when he gets up in the morning.

On the intellectual level, Wallace understands all of Andre's soul-searching, emotional journeys, even agrees with him on most of his criticisms of day-to-day life in the Western world, yet he cannot picture his world any other way, has no regard for the vague primal emotions that seem to occasionally rule Andre's tenuous existence, and actually takes pleasure in many of the things Andre despises.


I won't give too much away, yeah right, but one of the most interesting theories mentioned in the movie is that New York City (or any city, really) is actually some sort of 'perfect' prison, built by its inmates--who are schizophrenically also their own guards--who are too proud of their construction to ever leave it. Instead, they mill around giving themselves pointless-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things tasks, meaningless concerns to occupy their minds, trivial reasons for continuing to live there.

Yet, if they escaped, where would they go? To the woods? Would they dance around a fire all night and sleep during the day, making love atop wildflowers? Would they hold a flute in the wind and listen to the beautiful song forever? How long would that peace last until a new prison was built? Is it our nature to build prisons?

Who knows.

But I do know this--the first record I put on after watching the movie was Les McCann and Eddie Harris' Swiss Movement (recorded live at the Montreaux Jazz Fest in 1969; a gem).

Wouldn't you know it, the main refrain on the very first track--my all-time favorite jazz song, if you're keeping track--is "Try to make it real compared to what?"

The song was somehow intended as a critique of the Vietnam War, although I don't fully understand how and I wonder if that was just a cover story for the reality that it was, in actuality, a secret message sent to me from the future, since people/beings in the future would of course know I was watching My Dinner With Andre tonight (today being "Charlie Watched My Dinner With Andre Tonight" Day in the years 2041 and beyond).

If this is the case, I think the future is pretty cool for three reasons:

1. They can send messages through time

2. They have the patience to wait for those messages to be delivered 41 years after they were sent

3. They've not only got it all figured out, but can boil it down to an efficient eight-word sentence.

While we're making lists, I think the future is totally uncool for one reason:

1. The futuristic beings can do all those amazing things and, yet, they haven't found a way to make everything perfect for me. Wait...is there a lesson here?

Maybe...

Reality is what stares back at you in the mirror, what you see out your window, that mysterious smell in your closet. It is the only plane of existence of any importance and you can't hide from it in the woods, in a narcotic haze, by running away, by reinventing yourself. The human brain is too powerful, perhaps too powerful, imagination its Achilles heel.

People are the way they are. Twenty people running off into the woods with grandiose dreams will always wind up with a microcosm of New York, a governing body as petty as Congress, the same personal problems catching up with them.

There are too many variables at play in the world, too many ingrained biological/social/cultural traits to think you can escape from them by disengaging your brain. Reality must be dealt with at face value--get your kicks when you can, sure, but don't be so arrogant as to think that your lingering discomfort and fear won't follow you everywhere.

Death always finds a way.


Or something like that. Hey--thanks for picking up the check, by the way.

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Finally, There Is Justice

Courtesy Huffington Post:

NEW YORK — The president of Brooklyn has declared Beyonce an official Brooklynite.

Borough President Marty Markowitz said Beyonce is a Brooklynite by marriage and by moxie. Beyonce's husband, Jay-Z, is from Brooklyn.

The superstar visited the New York City borough Friday for the opening of the Beyonce Cosmetology Center at a residential substance abuse treatment center.

The Phoenix House offers programs for residents in carpentry, building maintenance, computer technology and culinary arts.

Beyonce said she thought it also should have more programs geared toward women. She said her mother's Houston salon helped so many people feel good about themselves and better their lives.

Beyonce first spent time at Phoenix House when preparing for the role of Etta James in the 2008 film, "Cadillac Records."

I wonder what the President of Brooklyn is doing right now. Is he getting up before the sun, practicing his speech for a long-overdue lunchtime banquet honoring the Beastie Boys as "Official Cool Dudes" as he shaves?

Probably.

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And the Hot Trend in Fashion This Season Is...

Oddly (or is it?) coinciding with Oscar season, the month-long back-slapping circus that is Fashion Season has officially begun.

It is Fashion Week in New York City, people.

And your favorite Authority on Everything, Goodtime Charlie, has front-row seats in Bryant Park. Who will he love? Who will he hate? The world wants to know; the world will never get to know, unless it first has sex with me.


Before those pesky Winter Olympics copycats made it passe, MBFW/NYC claimed its first casualty just as the first black-rhino-skin stilettos were poised for the opening runway strut, beneath a malnourished-but-still-very-fuckable-come-on-let's-give-her-a-break waif.

Yes, edgy British wunderkind Alexander McQueen is dead at 40, found hanging from a rope in his multi-million-dollar London apartment, Simon & Garfunkel's Richard Cory on repeat:



Fear not--the show went on as scheduled, folks.

Trendy tragedy aside, I must report that one thing has been made abundantly clear at Fashion Week:

Expensive clothes are totally "in" this season.

This unexpected development sent shockwaves across the globe, surprising attentive clothes-wearers from the halls of the New York Athletic Club to the chateaux of Gstaad. Their concerns mingled with cigar smoke in the rafters of five-star bistros the world over:

"How will we know which of these items to choose?"
"What shoes do I wear with these gowns?"
"How on Earth does one stylishly pair these exquisite separates?"

Fear not, my fellow fashionistas--as always, I have the answer:

Meet Toni Ferrara, who is just one of many fashion stylists available to you for an initially-exorbitant-seeming-but-then-totally-reasonable-when-you-think-about-it fee. How reasonable, you ask?

Check it:

Thank God there are such selfless souls out there willing to affordably perform these essential services. Can you imagine how dreary the dock denizens of Dubrovnik would look otherwise? I hesitate to even contemplate that garish scene...


On the other hand, if you are so stinking rich that you don't even know what numbers mean or that poor people exist, then you qualify for the services of Yours Truly and should contact me immediately so we can begin draining one of your off-shore trusts post-haste.

Trust me--it's worth it.

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Now That's What I Call Invisible

(photo by John Quintero)

A 13 year-old boy with Asperger's Syndrome recently spent 11 days riding trains around New York City by himself, eating potato chips to stay alive.

Pictures of him wearing a red sweatshirt were posted everywhere. Subway employees were told to be on the lookout. He wore the exact same red sweatshirt. Nobody saw him. Nobody said a word to him. For 11 days.


Meanwhile, I can't imagine being on a NYC subway train for 11 minutes without somebody asking for money, complimenting my ass, or calling the cops. This kid is either a total superfreak, a budding superhero, or both.

I mean, I'm not sure what the actual requirements are [full disclosure--the author is not yet in the fold] to be a superhero these days, but 264 consecutive hours of full invisibility in a crowded city subway? That must at least get you an interview over at DC Comics.

That is, if you haven't already decided to drown yourself out of humiliation or been impressed into service for one of the darker agencies at the Pentagon.

Hmm...it would be great way for him to meet chicks...

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Math Scores in the Shitter

"U.S. Math Tests Find Scant Gains Across New York"

The New York Times is reporting that scores across New York State--on one of the easiest math tests ever--indicate no improvement in what were already low math scores.

Goddamn Wall Street always has to bring down the little guys.

OHH!!!!!!

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Everybody Wants to Be a Soprano

I didn't think $10,000 could buy that much these days, but I guess I was wrong.

Troopergate et al in Wasila, Blagojevich gets caught selling a Senate seat, Sanford is busted hypocritically lying about an affair, California goes bankrupt trying to please every special interest around, now it's New Jersey's turn for a black eye.

The surprising thing is not that several mayors and state officials were guilty of rampant corruption--I'm no babe in the suburbs here--and not even that they had the rare luck to get caught and indicted for it, but rather that we are talking about such paltry sums.

Ten grand? I know those piles start to add up (I hear), but still...bold. And stupid. Congratulations, assholes!


My two favorite parts of the story:

Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, was accused of enticing vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 and then selling the organ for $160,000.

Is 'ten grand' some kind of religious hocus pocus that gets people to do anything a rabbi wants him to? Who the hell would sell a kidney for $10,000? How often did this work? Why am I not in this line of work?

Also:

The timing of the investigation dovetails with the timing of bank fraud charges against Solomon Dwek, son of the founders of the Deal Yeshiva, a religious school that teaches children in the Sephardic Jewish tradition. Mr. Dwek passed a $25 million bad check at a PNC Bank branch in 2006, according to The Asbury Park Press.

What? Who the hell tries to pass off a bad check for TWENTY-FIVE MILLION dollars? How does one find the courage to attempt such a daring feat?

"No, don't worry about it--it's reverse psychology, man--it's SO much money that they will be LESS suspicious than if it's just for some little skidmark like $10,000. Cuz, like, who would ever have the balls for such a thing? Right? Trust me."
"Well, okay--but we should definitely have the rabbi take it in, just to be safe, so we can have religion on our side..."
"Oh, of course--I was thinking the same thing."

The next day, at a PNC Bank in the ghetto...

"Alright, I just need to call in to check on this and then we'll be all set."
"Oh, you don't need to call it in--it's real."
"We're talking about $25 million here--I need to check with the account holder."
"Come on, you can trust me--I'm a rabbi!"
"I don't trust anybody--I'm a banker. Excuse me."

Ha, ha, ha--what an idiot, right? It's good to laugh.


And it's okay, too, because--as the article notes three times--the Jews involved were not the average, everyday Jews you know and love, the kind that only go to temple for high holidays and often remind you of the Holocaust neither of you were around for, but never of the fact that their unnecessary (and not universally beloved) land theft to create Israel is one of the main reasons the United States/Nations is involved in an endless war on terrorism; the kind that it is NOT okay to have a laugh at, ever, in light of their eternal suffering, yadda yadda.

These were Syrian Jews, so, you know, they might as well be straight-up towelheads, right? Where is Syria on a map, right? No big surprise to John Q. Public that they are a corrupt and devious fringe branch of the Jewish faith--the shock is the absence of a sensational, Rove/Cheney/Murdoch-planted mention of a potential link to Al-Qaeda in the article.


In other news, a Catholic priest just confessed to raping 1000 little boys over the last 40 years and repeatedly lying about it in court. He was sentenced to ten Hail Marys and transferred to a different parish to end his days in peace and pleasure.

Thank God for confession, right? Heaven will be so sweet...

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Warning: Your World Is About to Be Turned Upside Down

What a waste of time, brainwaves, money, computing power, and newspaper inches.

Seriously? Somebody had to work really hard to figure out that most cultural events in New York happen at the grandiose cultural centers built in Manhattan, and the most talked-about theatrical performances happen on Broadway?

Without even reading the entirety of her amazing study, I bet she determined that most movies screened in Los Angeles occur in movie theaters.

Thanks, Sarah Williams! Now go drink a fucking bucket of hydrochloric acid* and stop wasting everybody's time.


* I have yet to receive the funding necessary to fully study the results, but I have a pretty strong hunch that this will kill you**. Can you let me know so I can put a little red pushpin on my map of your neighborhood?


** Legal disclaimer: I do not actually want Ms. Williams to kill herself. Maybe she can just quit her day job, move to rural West Virginia, and spend the rest of her life quietly tilling soil and muttering to herself***.


*** I wonder which of those two scenarios is more appealing. I would definitely require a long hard think about it, were I presented with those two options...

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A Brief Message from the Brooklyn Pizza Laureate

Actual pizza restaurant review found on Yelp:

01/28/09

I had gotten so stir crazy I was talking to the walls. I got myself reasoning with a mouse in a glue trap that a quick death was better than what sad, long torment awaited him if I didn't act quickly. How long can a man sit in front of a computer and write? I'd been snowed in, unemployed, bitch-less and my only excursions to the outside world were to Crunch gym on Flatbush.

But then the skies turned blue again. So I ventured out, went to the coffee shop. Spoke to other human beings. It was blissful nirvana. I was alive--a living breathing man. A man with id, with needs and dreams.

By the time I came home my roommate and two of our good friends were there. The University of Kentucky was playing Ole Miss. I had human interaction, friends even. There was beer but something was missing. Some missing piece of my soul cried in the distance.

"Do you hear that?" I asked
"Sounds like death throes of something big. Something ... unnatural," my rooommate said.
"'Tis thy hunger, lad," our good friend said ('cause he's a pirate in this story). "The beast need be slain by fair shoreline of peperoni"

I knew what to do. Muscle memory intervened. I acted. Jack Bauer would be proud. Throwing myself across the coffee table I grabbed yonder cellphone. Quickly I dialed the numbers.

"Antonio's pizza, how may I help you?"
"Ride! Ride now, my friend, in the hour of despair. Spare not a wither! Let the red dawn err the clash of steel compel thee!"
"Excuse me? What the fuck are you talking about, chief?"
"Oh ... ahem, sorry. Yeah, I need a large pie with pepperoni."
"Okay. Gimme your address ..."

Antonio's was there to deliver. That familiar voice, friendly, ready to dish out a pie and so Brooklyn, even African Bushmen can place it, was there for us. The Wildcats weren't doing so well, and neither were we. There were chips and beer of course. There is nothing more natural for an American male than chips, beer and sports. But it isn't complete without pizza or grilled meats.

The first half toiled on, and it had only been ten minutes since the call but the pain was too great. One of our friends leaned into the table.

"Thar be tell of a group of sailors, lost on the seas of China called Papa Johns in desperation. Only to be bitterly led to the rocky shore by a delivery guy in a Hyundai."

We all shivered a little. What would our fate be? Was there time. My roommate was growing paler than usual.

Then the doorbell rang. It was Antonio's. I paid the man quickly. Antonio's is on the higher end of the pizza scale vis-a-vis money. A large pepperoni pie cost us $17 but it was worth every bite.

They have a wide array of calzones and rolls if pizza doesn't tickle your fancy, but how could it not? This is what pizza is all about. This is New York at its culinary best.

The University of Kentucky lost but what did I care. I'm probably never going to Kentucky and my stomach was happier than a pirate locked in a chest of gold.


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My two cents? The pizza was excellent.

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Why Is This News?

"He likes long walks in the park, beer, baseball, touching people, and flaunting his authority."

"We need dialogue--but not about abortion or gay marriage or condoms or anything else we are proudly in the dark ages about."

“He is with Rome on the big issues and on the little ones, but he does not do it in a dictatorial fashion--except when he orders me to recant my position on ordaining female priests. "


Okay, so I paraphrase; but the bottom line is--why is this an article in the New York Times? Why do we need to know that some predatory cult organization has moved one of their leaders from Milwaukee to New York? Why do we care if he knows how to order a hot dog?

Why are there so many contradictions of character within the article itself? Is this a surreptitious anti-Catholic piece?

I sure hope so.

"BREAKER--BREAKER--In other pressing news, local Springfield PTA President Maureen Chevarsky loves ice cream, poodles, and hugging children..."

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How Exactly Is 'Death By Beheading' Not First-Degree Murder?

So a Muslim man living in upstate New York is served with divorce papers by his third wife, on grounds of domestic abuse (which was why his previous two wives divorced him).

A week later, he cuts off her head with a broadsword.

The man turns himself in and is arrested. We are told not to jump to conclusions, that this has nothing to do with honor killings in Muslim cultures, that we should feel sorry for him because he is in shock after what he did.

He is held without bail, on charges of second-degree murder.

I'm definitely not a lawyer, thank Satan, so perhaps there is a reasonable explanation for this ridiculous charge, but what the fuck does somebody have to do to get first-degree murder? Record a videotaped message of premeditation and then make sure to chop her up and eat her after the beheading?

I hope this guy gets chewed to death by rats in Sing-Sing.

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Told You So

I knew this guy was trouble from the get.

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