it's bad enough you're being sold out again to a gang of bandit douchebags while the corporate vampire's teeth are still sucking at the american people's neck; their minions are latching onto a vein in the wrist.
this seems to be the case. (as if you didn't see this coming).
if you know me, you know that it's pronounced "doooshbags," where i come from, which by the way, is brooklyn. i don't have so strong a brooklyn accent, but this word and accent were made for each other.

i overheard a part of an interview that i revisited later online with a reporter named mike taibbi talking to leonard lopate.
it regards a story he wrote in rolling stone last month about goldman-sachs.

if you had any hope for reform of the banking industry, this'll learn you.

i never got to the point i wanted to make when i went to breezy, aka "the irish riviera" and communed with nature and the lizard guy who sounds like eduardo cianelli and looks like omar sharif a few days back with my dog, maxx, because i chose to shield myself in a reverie involving records, beer and reefer.
denial isn't just a river in egypt.
i felt the need to see that line written. i've heard it for years.
i neglected to center on the conversation i had with the gateway national park federal nature reserve officer who i met as i walked the road that led me to the entrance to the beach we weren't allowed to enter.


this note days old. suns have set and risen and set again a few times.
before i go on with this story, i need discuss where i walked my dog and what we did yesterday or the day before that.
my life is a salad full of days and nights, tossed.
we were sampling the water from a few local hydrants.
i need to tell you, dear reader, that if you haven't sampled water from a flowing NYC hydrant, you haven't tasted the lusciousness of the best water in the world.
seeing a running hydrant connects me to my urban childhood.



and not a childhood with those spray caps.
they happened when i was deep in teenagerdom.



of course they made sense. 



but a hydrant is a hydrant in generational eyes, but like the combustion engine - especially big-block, gas-guzzling behemoths - change comes hard to a people who got the OK to live life with impunity with total disregard for the rest of the planet for so long, it's hard to imagine that the illusion is over. that's yet another screw in the "white guy" dilemma.
note to the american subsection of humanity - you never were in charge.
being captain kick-ass for a century or two is a hard habit to break, but it's happening. the earth might be taking it personally.
so might china. you know them.....they're running our tab at the bar and the bartender is getting a little nervous.
america is a well-dressed drunk who goes to the bathroom a little too often and there's a little bit of white stuff getting crusty around the his nostrils.
america is very talkative and knows all the angles. again.
america did a few months in rehab at the end of '08 but was told about this new pill that ends addictions of all sorts and adds moral fiber to the new lease on life the government gave them.
the purveyors of these miracle pills have tiny, razor-sharp teeth.
i know this because it came to me in a dream i had after eating chinese food. i called the order in and asked if they had any MSG and they said "yes."
i asked, "could you put lots of that stuff in my order, please," and the lady said, "of course."
i said "thank you."

but that's another story. i was talking about nyc hydrant water.
someone might start about how this water is being wasted, running as it is into the curb only to find its way into a sewer and they'd be right; for them, i say this - sorry, i didn't do it and i don't have the wrench needed to turn the thing off.
me and maxx sauntered around my 'hood and drank from the wellspring located around the corner and and a few others in the surrounding blocks.
maxx couldn't have enough of it. he drank like there hadn't been water in his bowl in years.
i crouched down, cupping my hand and felt the cool water run over it as i drank in the decades. my knees stopped aching and had nothing more on my mind than "what's next? never mind."
maxx stood beside me as i lowered my head and let the water stream through my 1961 crewcut, my eyes closed, the splashing sound of water on pavement not so dissimilar than the stream in south fallsburg hitting centuries-old stone as the water headed past our points of existence ten years later when my hair was a foot longer, my head at the same angle there and then as it was this night on dodworth street almost forty years later and i can swear it's the same question in my mind.
"what's next? never mind."
nothing else.
i run my hands through my soaked, thinning hair as the hydrant water runs over my closed eyes. i rub my face as if washing it and whip my head back using centrifugal force to free the excess water from me.
dogs are better at this than me.
maxx returns to the stream to drink deep one more time.
i rise, my knees reminding me that i have returned to the 21st century.
"shit, i could catch cold all over again" i think. "it's pretty cool tonight."
"fuck it," i say in an exaggerated whisper to no one in particular, least of all myself.

now i will go on. it's what i do.
after all, i was talking about a conversation with a member of the best and the brightest of mars' con-artist lizards, those who look at us in terms of deliciousness and pinkness, as extraordinary morsels chiseled and ground sinew and bone, blood and a suit, just another part of the celestial food-chain.
thank goodness i don't matter to them.
thanks goodness i haven't been scooped up by those aliens who use humanity as batteries. if you're reading this, you're as lucky as i am.
maybe luckier. maybe you're young or loved or happy or grateful. maybe you're not. maybe it'll change, maybe it won't.
whatever it is, you're not a martian grifter's meal and suit and you haven't been stolen away by those others (the grifting lizards refuse to tell me more about) who scoop up humanity and use us as an energy source.
when they got you, you've run out of luck.



it was on this road that the pickup truck growled behind me as i walked with maxx.
i was wearing (for the first time) a set of binoculars, for on this day, i became a "bird watcher."
i'm not sure how long this'll be a focus (pardon the pun) of my time out here once september 15th rolls around - when maxx can hit the beach without fear of federal charges being filed (by means of a summons) - but i decided on this trip to give it a shot until i could make enough money to get a camera upgrade - you know, a camera with a grown-up "zoom lens," or maybe even a "telephoto lens." 
i've been talking this stuff for a while and it's become even more of a passion since hearing from a one Tracy Palmer. she was a Scrap Bar child (by way of texas) who i friended up within 1989, who is a wonderful nature photographer and renewed a friendship after twenty-year snooze by way of the innernet.
we met in 1989, shortly after my being beaten to unconsciousness by a couple of psychos on a steroid-rage-beat-a-thon that i witnessed happening to the manager of a band called savoy brown.
it was in front of a new, west-side venue called "Kaos."
this was around the time of the first big push to save the brazilian rainforest and there were benefits all over the place and i had somehow gotten joey ramone (we had gotten past the "rough-patch" in our relationship) to commit to record with debbie harry on a benefit album.
or maybe i dreamed all this.
well, scrap bar was on board and involved in this night of celebrity pool playing (not "pool-playing celebrities" but "celebrities playing pool") at some place in the twenties on broadway where you can pay too much for a game of pool in the basement and feast on lush dining at street level.
i don't remember the name of the place. but it sure had high ceilings and i'll bet the pool tables are gone, but if gambling were legal in NYC, they'd have card tables all over the place.
cards tables are the new pool tables.
i met one of my heroes at this event, richie havens.
he had great weed. he was a nice person.
i first heard of him when he appeared on the johnny carson show in 1967. he performed a song called "high-flying bird."
i bought that album a day later.

but i digress.
all of these celebrity-pool-players (Richie havens among them) were heading to play at this Kaos place, because that's where the fundraising concert was being held after the pool game-benefit.
i, like everyone else, headed to Kaos.
this place had a small jet "crashed" into the front of the place as an awning, like the hard rock had the back of the caddy.
and that's where i was witnessing this guy getting a beating. i didn't know who, what or why, so i was skirting the action, trying to just get inside. (i had a laminate, dude....)
the attackers were muscular white guys who were delighting in their abuse of the somewhat nebbish-y guy who looked as aggressive as a forty-year-old, jewish hippie.
which of course, what he was.
it's like i woke them from a dream of beating up a nebbishy guy and came over and immediately began kicking my ass for it.
the action was so fast and furious, the next thing i remember was a policeman rousing me to consciousness. i was laying in the curb in front of the place where i was beaten. the policeman, saying to the other cop, "hey - it's steve, that scrap bar guy."
then a bunch of motorcycles pulled up and it was members of new york's premier motorcycle club, and the president (his name was butch) also standing over me asking me if i was ok.
apparently, when those guys began to beat me to dreamland, victim number one got away and phoned the police.
with the sirens' approach, the assailants scooted or hid in the crowd inside. i didn't much care.
the police asked me if i wanted to go to the hospital and get checked out.
i opted for a drive back to scrap bar.
those guys were arrested and went to jail for the weekend. and were charged with a few cases of assault.
i would find out that one of these douchebags (remember how to pronounce it, now...) was one of the owners of the place.
frat-boy gone wild.
what happened in the end;
sonny boy paid plenty for his legal representation but was able to have the charges dropped.
Kaos closed shortly after nonetheless.

this has nothing to do with anything, except i met tracy palmer a short time after this happened.
so, uh...to be continued.

add it to the list if you want.

the sea of tranquility

May 23rd, 2009

i had dinner with my dad a few days back.
“you realize dolores will be gone two years next month?” he said.
“it feels like it’s yesterday and ten years ago at the same time,” i said.
i had it all balled up with chemo and radiation.
this life-death thing was going on and her decline while tragic, had to take a back seat to my battle to not let this death thing be a group event, not that i felt i had an active part in my survival, but attitude is everything.
my self-preservation, my hope for a bit more time in this toy factory had kicked in and centered on survival.
i can’t stop thinking like this right now.

my dear little friend is still on the other side of the above photo, probably heading around, hopefully soon to reappear and slingshot back into moments i had grown accustomed to.
it might be a good idea to keep business as usual, so to the glossary;

18 - Meaningful learning - A cognitive process in which learners relate new information to the things they already know.
if meaningful learning for the human species is to ever matter on this planet it would have to be stored genetically because it’s continually washed away by generations who continue to do the same stupid things and demand different results, yet another reason that the earth we’re keen on being kind and loving to could give half a shit about our green initiatives because there’s protozoa, cockroaches, coyotes and horseshoe crabs that are chomping at the bit for another ice age.
there. i used it in a sentence.
i’m not hootin’ and hollerin’ about a thing.
i’m not railing against a blessed thing.
i’m all about the sanctity of life.
i’m all about the sanctity of death.
humanity will forever be hamstringed by the “douchebag affect.”

i’m saying there’s a world of liars who don’t mean what they say. i’m saying that going green is, while well and good, is just another “sell.”
i’m saying that humanity doesn’t get it till it gets its ass handed to itself, just like…..humanity.
and then watch out.
i believe that certain wheels were set in motion decades ago and “fixing things” might be noble but futile. i’m not saying don’t try. i’m saying we need some of the intergalactic yowza, mega-zipadeedooda sparkling-like-a-garish-firestorm-of-joy, sort of luck.
i believe all sorts of stuff.
thank goodness i’m an endlessly-editing work in probable progress.
thank goodness i believe everything i say especially while i’m saying it.
hooray for my rapid-fire belief system.
i’m not praying for or predicting cataclysm, i’m just saying that things are going to happen. cause and effect.
thank goodness i’m an expert.
things happen all the time.
that’s my expert opinion.
people die. cities die. people are born. cities are reborn.
we’re lucky. we’re out of luck.
that’s more expertness.
we plunder and abuse and push the earth-envelope halfway to hell then try to get all sorts of palsy-walsy with it, hoping it hasn’t gotten personally disenchanted with us.
i’ve learned my lesson.
experts like me are always learning.
yup.

…and i can’t get me out of my head…..

May 22nd, 2009

such a lovely day.why is everybody so damned crazy? me included.
i chose to do what i didn’t do yesterday and that was to ride my bike and get things done the old-fashioned way. i got a mail sack and made a plan to fill it with things i
needed from the island of manhattan. there’s all sorts of stuff on the island of manhattan. the last time i was on the island of manhattan, i ran into my dear-old friend rai, a woman i mentioned a while back who was in the record business and gave me early cassettes from bands like king missile, ween and bongwater. she was a cassette-making
genius, her mixed tapes along the lines of my own dreams of freeform-cross-genre-twisting-where’d-that-song-come-from? sort of musical art.
she was among the first friends of scrap bar, but that was an earlier time this week when i was with car and maxx and drove back to brooklyn with her.
today i was rolling along with the wind in my hair (or what’s left of it). i had a night of limited sleep. i drifted in and out of an anxiety i last felt in october of 2007, the night before that surgery. i’ve become a friend of someone who was going through a similar episode this very day, so last night i felt all the things i thought she might be feeling, sort of “sympathy anxiety pains.” i would drift off, i’d sleep a moment like a dope nod and spring up unaware of the time gone or where i was.
i couldn’t center my thoughts. it’s funny how this moment of “dopeness” would rear its head now, days after running into rai. we shared alphabet-city adventures. we courted the decaying stairways of second and C, lined-up with junkies, professors, suits, students, rockers, “funny meeting you here”-s; plumbing leaking from floors above, trickling down, echoing against the white hexagonal tile floor below, people in single file, quiet and contrite, hugging the walls ascending the old stairway, monitor-thugs openly displaying holstered, automatic handguns bullying the buyers, reminding them to have their money ready (think seinfeld “soup nazi” episode, sinister) where getting pistol-whipped was a distinct possibility so there was never a laughtrack; just the tingly feeling of adrenaline, dopesickness and fear.
and fun. death is fun in hallways provided you got the twenty.

guess what? this a perfect time to reprise the glossary term i ended a previous note with. i can do this because i never used the term in a sentence, as is my process, so here goes;

this is a good time for another word from the glossary.
17 - Maintenance rehearsal - Repetition of information over and over to keep it “fresh” in working memory.
Reprising this glossary term is a perfect example of maintenance rehearsal, and if i do it again i’m sure to piss someone off, maybe even myself.
there, i used it in a sentence.

it is also a wonderful way of digressing, of getting away from the point.
for a moment, i’ll think that the point is me.
me me me.
but it’s not. it’s my friend who haunts me. it’s my friend who makes me look far. it’s my friend who, after sending me her home address would chime in, “hey, wait a minute….are you a stalker?”
and i don’t get the opportunity to say “of course! i learned how to be one from that doo-wop song “silhouettes” ”
i want to tell her that it’s one of the scariest songs ever written but i can’t.
i want to share stalker stories with her. i want to say “hey, i got a few myself.”
i want to tell her how much i need to continue this conversation and how right now i’m wandering in a field of monologues and it’s all well and good because i never grow tired of my voice but then i’d have to admit to a lie because there are voices i need to hear in this world and she’s one of them. she’s “a contemporary” of mine.

i am forever whistling past graveyards then running out dodging traffic.
i don’t want to talk about anything. i’m cycling around the east village, rolling past where “the world” used to be, where i found myself living for a few months because i was a successful homeless bar owner, where i’d be purchasing “extra power” a year or so later with rai.
there would be a few too many projectors occupying the same screen as i try to not think about my need to know. worse, all i have is this anxious sketch from decades ago and this clear voice, though i’ve never heard it.
i’m a sucker for a kind word. i’m a sucker for a heart full of knuckles who punches the canvas.
i try to put this uneasiness into perspective, and all i can put together is this;
the apollo 13 would have to circle the moon in order to slingshot themselves back home toward earth and for that time, there would be no radio contact.
i’m mission control and with all the radar and computers and gee-gaws, i got nothing.