Entries Tagged 'pop culture' ↓

Divali 2006 in Jackson Heights, Queens, NYC

I guess the weatha was nice that day, cause the shoe shiner was out, slipping around in the DC sunshine.

Too bad, as missbhavens said, that $1 info sounds like a good deal.

Apparently, they’re serious.

First, a note: blogger and vlogger extraordinaire (and fellow inhabitant of Queens) missbhavens is one of my few and beloved readers. Missb– I do not know why you are getting caught by my spam filter! I am trying to rectify it, please bear with me.

Now, did I ever mention that I am addicted to the podcasts of Flight Attendant Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase? Click that link for her blog with podcasts, or go to iTunes and subscribe (she’s in there). On a recent round-trip to Europe on her employer’s airline (which shall remain nameless, but loyal readers know), I secretly hoped she’d be on my flight. (Luckily, she has a distinctive voice., so if she offered me a soft drink, I’d know.)

I am not sure if it is Betty’s sparkling personality, or the way she gets fellow crew members, and even passengers, to tell the funniest stories of life in flight or her globe-trotting travels, but I am glued to my headphones. (I have a hunch that I could get into well-made podcasts even on topics I have no interest in, but there’s not enough time in the day to test that out in any systematic way!)

It might also be the fact that the verbal chameleon has a weak connection to the airline industry, having once spent a summer working security in the busiest airport in the U.S. It was there that I met fellow security guard Ibrahim, a Cuban marathon runner, who whiled away our long night shifts regaling me with tales of his three girlfriends (two of whom were otherwise attached, which meant many of the stories were of near-escapes, three steps ahead of potentially life-threatening situations).

It’s also where I met Mazur, the cleaning man who knew no English, but taught me my first words of Polish (note: I still only know a few.) Mazur was always mopping and buffing the walkway in Terminal One at 2:30 in the morning, when I went to “lunch.” This was the walkway where the rainbow neon lights flutter above, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue booms out.

In the daytime, filled with people, it doesn’t boom. But at 2:30 a.m., the tune ends slowly in the darkened walkway, barely lit at night except for the decorative rainbow lights above, and the recorded woman’s voice warning “the moving walkways are now ending:”

Boom boom boom
Boom boom
Boom boom boom
Boom boooooom boooooom boooooooom boooooooooooooooooom!

The effect was downright eerie. Mazur was a welcome sight.

When I left at the end of the summer to go to college, Mary and Wally and the other security guards gave me a silver pen and pencil set, engraved with my initials.
I still have it. I used it today.

Hello there! I have come out of the cave in which I am working (dissertation, job, unpacking boxes, you know) in order to bring you a special bulletin.

Cyrille de Lasteyrie (aka Vinvin) is a genius, and I am not in the habit of using such terms loosely. His Bonjour America is the best thing I have ever seen (for free, on the web). I discovered him while trying to catch up with Bicyclemark’s recent blog postings. (It’s a truism that most of my good internet finds come from Bicyclemark.) He’s a Frenchman who has something to say to America. And he is a very funny man. What’s refreshing is that while Vinvin is critical of American culture and foreign policy, his commentary is (from what I have seen) always funny and never facile. He obviously loves us, dislikes Bush, and wants to teach us about cheese.

Go and watch “The Frencheese Project.” As Vinvin says,

You’ll be scared, and then you’ll learn a few things about cheese. Is the french cheese good for the health? This is the big question of this episode!

Or watch “What do we think about America? A big poll,” and find out what the French think about Dick Chenay. (Yes, Dick Chenay.)

Or just enjoy a nice impersonation of Charlie Sheen with a French accent.

What could be better? Well, there is a whole archive worth of vlogs from Bonjour America. So have fun answering that question yourself. And do answer it, please. If I keep posting at the heady rate of once every 5 weeks, I do expect you to try and keep up. In return, I will endeavor always to include a picture, Dear Reader, for your enjoyment.

I just don’t understand this sofa.

The Sicilian has a unique approach to the world, as you may remember from our conversation about Zombies.

Last night he saw a commercial for a new reality show following “People who work out in gyms!” No, I am not kidding. Granted, it was on some channel no one watches (FitTV or somesuch.)

And he said, “Why don’t they come out with an interesting reality show.”
And I said, “Like what?”
And he said, “You know, something new, something really good. Like Cannibals!”
And I laughed.
And he said, “Or lepers!”

Seven cannibals, picked to live in a house, and have their lives taped. You know, it does sound interesting. Come on, cable TV producers. You know you want to pluck this man out of his mild-mannered librarian job and put him to work, don’t you?

Today I was walking down Jackson Avenue, and I came to an intersection. On a lamppost near the corner, there was a piece of paper (carefully affixed) and a string holding a pen. The piece of paper said, “Write what happens here.” And some drunk people had written something about being drunk. And I wrote something mundane about waiting for the light to change (I was not feeling very inspired, dear reader, but I did participate, you have to give me that). As lame as the responses were, I liked the idea. It was nice to be asked. Perhaps someone else will pass by with a better story.

There was no explanation of who put this there or why. But when I encounter such things in my neighborhood, I always attribute them to the artists.

Another example: the appearance last year of plastic professionally-printed stickers (about 3 x 4 inches) pasted over the “push button for walk signal” button on crosswalk posts. Last February, New Yorkers found out from the NYTimes that those buttons–in the vast majority of cases, I believe it was something like 75% or 80%–do not work. Here’s a link to the article, but it’s no longer free. (Hey, I am an academic, I must compulsively document my vaguely remembered sources.) Anyway, the stickers that some wise folks had posted over the directions now said, “Push Button for Luck.”

They gave me many smiles, and I consider that lucky, don’t you?

The other thing that’s great about living in this neighborhood, with its low population and high percentage of arty folk, is that fashion-wise, anything goes. I am not talking about the dirty old 70’s t-shirts that pass for arty on the less-creative hipsters who stumble off the G-train from Williamsburg, confused and disoriented, looking for that happening party at PS1.

I’m talking women on bicycles with spiked hair, orange workmen’s boiler suits, and combat boots (dirty, not couture) speckled with paint. You can wear anything in this neighborhood and not look strange. And if you’re a woman with no makeup, they assume you’ve got something else going on. (That’s kind of true of true in NYC in general, except that on the big island of Manhattan, the tourists are always there to gawp and point at the more creative locals, like my tripped out transvestite comrade riding the D train, looking like a Chrismahanakwanzakah Tree in full technicolor-patterned skirt and very-much-contrasting blouse, faux fur, and tinsel. He was beautiful.) But here in artist-central, anything goes. It’s heavenly. Perhaps a bit on the mundane side of daring, but it suits me.

By the way, you’ll notice that the new verbal chameleon does not apologize for not posting in a month. The new verbal chameleon is an older, wiser, more economical, less apologetic, shinier, fluffier verbal chameleon. In short, the new verbal chameleon has been busy, but will do her best to keep you informed.

She wishes you all the best for the season. Um, if you’re still there?

Golden Bowl Fortune Cookies, as provided by my local purveyor of Chicken and Broccoli, are now becoming a large source of entertainment here in Long Island City. You know, my last “message” from them was quite bossy. And a little creepy, but in a fun way. However, they’ve followed up nicely with the latest directions:

Don’t worry about the world coming to an end. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.

What’s funny is that I read those words just after watching a clip of Wolf Blitzer asking Pat Robertson if the latest natural disasters (Katrina, Pakistan Earthquake, etc.) were a sign that the end of days (i.e. Armaggedon) was near. (As the Daily Show said much more eloquently than I will, nice piece of investigative journalism, Wolf.)

I note that the people at Golden Bowl apparently have, if not a handle on the future, a sparkling way with words. Their motto?

Fortune knocks but once . . .
but Golden Bowl Brand Fortune Cookies knocks three times.

I am not sure what it means, but it makes me think.

The same company that makes these cookies, Wonton Foods, was in the news last May when 110 people won Powerball lotteries across the country after playing numbers in their fortune cookie fortunes. According to this article from Reuters, 4-5 winners is typical, so when there were 110, investigators looked around and found out they’d all got their numbers from a fortune. Apparently some folks are really compelled to obey the fortune cookie. And what’s more, they were right.

Have you ever watched Jon Udell’s screencast “Heavy Metal Umlaut: The Movie”? It’s a screencast (a kind of low-budget internet movie) of the development, editing, and re-editing of the Wikipedia entry for “heavy metal umlaut” (you know, the mostly gratuitous little dots over letters in heavy metal band names?) Anyway, it offers not only an amusing glimpse at the use of heavy metal umlauts, but also a really useful case study of how one Wikipedia entry evolved. Tracing edits and re-edits in elapsed time is really fascinating. It answered a lot of my own questions about what happens when people change Wikipedia entries, and says a lot about how democratic this medium truly can be. Click on the word screencast from the page this is linked to.

I had the strangest dream.

An older friend* asked me to come out to visit his friend for an evening, and so I did. The host turned out to be Tom Bosley.

My tired friend excused himself early, and Tom and I drank whisky. He said he was born in Northern Ireland, and emigrated at a young age, and not a lot of people knew that.** Having spent a great deal of time in N.I., I was fascinated. He produced news clippings of his boyhood, and his accent slowly came back. A little.

In the dream, I was thinking, “I have to blog this. Everyone will be so surprised I was at Tom Bosley’s home.” Amazing what the dream-you thinks might be interesting. Sorry now to disappoint, but I had to blog it anyway. My dream self told me to.

*He was an old friend in the dream. I have absolutely no idea who that person was.

**He’s not. Which is why they don’t. But when I woke up, I googled him, thinking my subsconscious was providing fascinating factoids as I slept. It wasn’t. According to google, he was in a frightening show with a sappy woman from Northern Ireland, but my dream, thankfully, left that out. And I am pretty sure I did not know that before I googled it. I have been happily repressing Roma Downey in my memory for a decade.

Note to self: the dream me is not psychic.

Note to everyone: if you’re not interested in either Six Feet Under or Quakerism, do feel free to skip this post!

Note to 6 Feet Under Fans: No spoilers below, I promise. Incidental details only.

There are not a lot of television shows I give a rat’s ass about, but I do love this one. Despite the fact that I think the writers became way too melodramatic a long time ago. And what’s with Nate’s bizarre behavior? (Just an example, this week, Maggie said, “Life is scary,” and Nate responded a little too loudly and with a demented grin, “It’s fucking terrifying!”)

So this week on 6FU,
Nate visits a Quaker meeting. For some reason, he can’t stop calling it a “Quaker Church.” I doubt I have any Quaker readers, so I should say that the Quaker religion has a few major branches in the US, and yes, there are Quaker churches. I won’t bore you with the detailed taxonomy. However, I would say Nate attended a liberal unprogrammed Quaker Meeting. (”Unprogrammed” just means there’s no minister, no set service or program: everyone sits and waits, and if they are moved by the spirit to say something, they do; there are also “programmed” meetings where at least some of the meeting is planned, and there might be readings, agreed-upon-in-advance singing or other features typical of other denominations.)

The other thing that was odd was that the meeting was held in a room that looked like a cross between a typical Protestant church and (oddly enough) the Fisher’s funeral parlor. This was inauthentic to me, because everyone was sitting in pews all facing in the same direction, as if they were looking at an altar. I’ve been to around 15 different meetings and never seen such a situation. The idea is that you face one another at least to some degree (typically with at least two sets of rows facing one another, sometimes four sets of rows, all facing a “center,” or a circle of chairs, depending on what’s possible). In Nate’s case, he had a room full of people talking at one another’s backs.

And then when they opened their mouths, well–that was a bit off too. It was bizarre that a member of the meeting stood up and asked for a lift home during the actual Meeting itself. It might seem like you can just get up and say something anytime you like, but that’s not what’s supposed to be happening. And this woman was obviously a long-time attender. At the end of the meeting, one Friend started singing a song and everyone joined in, knowing all the words. This is possible, but improbable: I have heard people sing spontaneously during an “unprogrammed” meeting a few times, but I have never seen everyone join in.

Sadly, the meeting that was portrayed was did not seem in any way what Quakers call gathered (loosely defined, by “gathered” I mean that there’s some sort of unity present in the room; often this becomes visible–or audible rather–by the messages which are shared vocally). If I had seen this show, it might not make me want to visit my first Quaker meeting.

On the other hand, it was nice to see Quakers in the popular media. We don’t get much airtime, you know. Most people think they’ve never met a Quaker, even if they have. Two folks I worked with when I was 21, asked me if I used electricity: confusing us for Amish (who speak a dialect of German and live a pre-modern lifestyle) and Shakers (who are celibate and all-but-extinct) is typical.

So despite these little quirks, and despite the fact that Nate seems to be losing his marbles in general (which, one hopes, would not make folks think Quakers loopy by association), it was nice to see. My favorite famous practising Quaker? Dame Judi Dench, of course! She went to a Quaker boarding school with A.S. Byatt and still attends meetings regularly. She’s quoted as saying, “It’s the only time I’m still.” My friends would probably attest to the fact that it’s the only time I’m quiet.

I was chugging along the Long Island Expressway today at a glorious 12-15 mph, when a man zipped by me in the right-hand lane. (Yes, on a bumper-to-bumper LIE, the right-hand lane is the fast lane, but oh, watch out for those disappearing lanes and merging vehicles.)

The man in question was middle-aged, with ginger hair and freckles from here to Tipperary, and he was blasting a lovely tune, and jammin’ away, dancing and singing loudly. “Got to admit, it’s getting bettah, it’s a little bettah, all the time. It can’t get no worse!”

Ahh, I thought, the Be-atles, as Ed Sullivan would say. I loves me some Beatles (as Ed Sullivan would not say.) I turned off my beloved Hugh Hamilton to hear my only-slightly-more-beloved Beatles (sorry Hugh, truly–you’re just a millisecond behind, really.)

And I basked a moment. Then the man jutted ahead, and I popped Hugh’s “Talkback Live” back on, WBAI (Pacifica Radio NYC). He was, as he always is, balanced and fair (note, I did not say fair and balanced), and he was tempering some over-zealous caller’s unsupported rant, with decorum, style, grace, intelligence, and that damned fine Guyanese accent.

If you don’t know Hugh Hamilton, you should. He does the best radio call-in show ever, and he’s progressive, but never lets things get cheap or sleazy or stupid. Unlike some.

A little later, the right lane slowed, and the happy singing freckled man returned to my side. And he was still singing, but this time it was “Band on the Run.” And I realized, with some dismay, that he was not listening to the Beatles at all. It was Paul McCartney and Wings. It was a concert and the road was loud, so it is not surprising that the former song sounded right.

What a disappointment, freckle-man.

I smiled again, but this time the smug smile of a true Beatles fan. I cranked Hugh up as he threw down another crazy caller, propped up another wise one, and kept everything just so.

I hope to blog more frequently soon, as Hugh says when he signs off every day, “The Good Lord Willin’, and the creek don’ rise.”

And then there was the huge cement mixer I saw twirling its cement down Queens Boulevard last week. It was white with enormous magenta, kelly, midnight, and red polka dots.

Like a dream.

In the great abyss which is the new reality television, producers are willing to sink lower and lower in order to gather our attention. Whereas reality TV was once an original concept (with an albeit absurd premise–that what we would see in the fishbowl on the screen would represent some kind of reality), it’s now been done to death.

The latest offerings from VH1 are the nadir (the Ralph Nadir, if you will):
Celebrities on a diet (Daniel Baldwin vs. the judge from Divorce Court), a burgeoning reality-romance featuring Brigitte Nielson and Flava Flav, and the new edition of the Surreal Life, featuring a whole lot of people I’ve never heard of, and Christopher Knight, AKA Peter Brady.

He looks as he did all those decades ago, that Peter Brady. He always was a hunk, even as a gawky teenager.

Tonight, I took a break from grovelling-for-money (aka fellowship applications with looming deadlines), and my current reality was pretty frustrating. In the offerings of the local cable service, frankly, I was fit for nothing more sophisticated than reality TV tonight.

And I saw clean-as-a-whistle Peter Brady (who’s gotta be 47 now) getting a lap dance in prime time on a Sunday night.

All my illusions are now shattered.

If this is reality, I’ll take some more fiction, please.

On the other hand, here’s some real reality: the Children of Iraq

Despite not being a very materialistic person, really, I do have a few possessions that I’m quite fond of: for their utilitarian value, of course. And in the coming socialist revolution, like good bread and subway passes, all the people should have them, and a mac to hook them up to.

I love the iPod. Yes, it is way overpriced and imperfect in many ways. And product hype can be ever so annoying.

But Dell CEO Kevin Rollins seems to be sowing some sour grapes when he compares it to another product he sees as a flash-in-the-pan (!), the Sony Walkman:

In an interview with Silicon.com, Kevin Rollins claimed the product faced an uphill struggle to capitalize on the success of the iPod and sustain it into the future, drawing parallels with Sony’s Walkman. “It’s interesting the iPod has been out for three years and it’s only this past year it’s become a raging success. Well those things that become fads rage and then they drop off. When I was growing up there was a product made by Sony called the Sony Walkman – a rage, everyone had to have one. Well you don’t hear about the Walkman anymore. I believe that one product wonders come and go. You have to have sustainable business models, sustainable strategy.”

I’m sorry, what? You don’t hear about the Walkman anymore? The Sony Walkman was huge. Yes, it was an overpriced brand-name item, and most normal folks got a cheap knock-off. But my generation spent our pre-teen and teenaged years wrapped in individual musical comfort and oblivion. It was revolutionary. In the States, “Walkman” (like Kleenex and Band-Aid and Jell-O) was one of those brand-names which managed to morph into a generic noun: what could be a better sign of the lasting hold a product has had on the populace? (In contrast, in Britain, where as a general rule brand names are not substituted as generic nouns, people have “personal stereos.” But in the U.S. it was always a “walkman,” no matter who made it.)

Yes, portable music killed quality audio, ruins our hearing, and makes everyone into anti-social hermits. But as much as I love music, I’ve never owned a really good stereo. And as a teenager, I would have been an anti-social hermit in the back of the car anyway. Sadly, I believe most families who stopped talking to one another did so well before they plugged into their headsets.

Since I stopped being a teenager, my use of personal stereo-type devices has been relegated to use in transportation and, only very occasionally, while walking down the street. Like when I tried to learn a few phrases of Polish on my way to work before a recent trip. Or when listening to Ben Kweller cheered up my commutes during a stressful and busy first week-on-the-job.

And I do lament the loss of hearing which I am convinced those headphones blaring U2’s War for most of the 80’s engendered. Or did it? My dad started to have trouble hearing in crowded bars and restaurants when he was 30, a good ten years before he started to listen to Offenbach on a personal stereo. (By the way, I’m not losing my hearing by a long shot, Thank God, but I do have trouble hearing people around a table in a crowded bar or restaurant.)

It’s true, I am an Apple junkie. They’re not perfect, but the company just seems to have a handle on user-friendly interfaces. I am the first to admit they need to bring prices down in order to get the world on board with their superior personal computing platform. They also need to listen to their users more carefully: the new under-$500 Apple Mini is a nice idea, but only for people who have a monitor lying around. The iPod Shuffle is ridiculously overpriced. And I don’t get the need for an iPod photo at all. Hasn’t everyone been asking for an Apple-designed PDA for years?

And yes, I think if I had a Creative Zen or an iRio or whatever-the-heck, I’d love it too. (Hey, especially if it was orange or pink.) It’s the utilitarian value, after all, (and the color!) that matters. But there’s something to be said for a well-made ground-breaking invention. Where’s that box of Kleenex?

Photos above from iPods Around the World at iPod Lounge.

“Naxalite,” by the Asian Dub Foundation.

Other people’s grocery lists _are_ funny.
Hard to believe, but true. Click on the ‘top 10.”
Now, I must sleep.

grocerylists.org | The Grocery List Collection