by Andrew Arnett
The situation in the White House is so serious and tragic, and has gone on for so long now that at this point almost the only thing you can do is to laugh at it, and it would be a nervous laughter at that. The current administration is like the bad house guests that have well overstayed their welcome and now, finally on the eve of their departure, are taking with them everything that isn't bolted down. Watch out because there go the towels and the TV set and the paintings hanging on the walls, and whoops, the silver ware has gone missing as well. Did someone check Fort Knox? Someone should before January 20, 2009 sets in, or else the new tenants are going to make an unpleasant discovery there. Unless of course the new tenants are McCain/Palin, who are members of the same extended family, and they'll know all about it and will be concerned only with rummaging through whatever is left over for themselves. The 700 billion dollar bailout is a case in point. The US Treasury coffers have been practically stripped down to the kitchen sink, and have been given away to friends and cronies of the first family. Perhaps we should all be thankful for what we still have left as a nation. A few years back McCain voted for Bush's plan to have the Social Security fund invested in the stock markets. We narrowly diverted that stroke of genius that came from an administration that has, if nothing else, been ruthlessly consistent.
Perhaps then, we should also be thankful that we're saddled with only two wars. And in addition, being the freedom loving people that we are, we should all breath a sigh of relief that we have the Patriot Act, and not actually having to wear shackles on our ankles with computer ID chips embed under our skin. At least not yet.
The litany of woes and mismanagement by the Neocons is too numerous and tedious to mention here, that would require a tome of Biblical proportions. I think the murder of New Orleans is representative enough of what this great nation has had to endure under the dictates of this bad luck hit and run crowd. They have succeeded in turning the American Dream into a nightmare. Now, when I wake up day after tomorrow, let's hope we can all wake up and say "wow, that was a very long (eight years long) and terrible collective dream we all just shared. Thank God it is over with." Whatever the case may be, please God, don't let me turn on the TV Wednesday morning to see McCain/Palin waving and grinning and doing a victory dance. Vote Obama 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Press Release: New Single by MEMORYHOLE
Listen to the song at: http://www.spraygraphic.com/ViewProject/2181/normal.html
This press release was first published on June 21, 2008 at http://www.pr.com/press-release/91400
New Single by Memoryhole is a Tribute to 40th Anniversary of Beatles "White Album"
Memoryhole is a psychedelic low-fi experimental rock band based in New York City.
New York, NY, June 21, 2008 --(PR.com)-- Memoryhole's first single release is also a tribute to the 40th anniversary of the Beatles "White Album" with the recording of the song Dear Prudence. Buster Ballyhoo, singer and composer for the band, has described this treatment of the timeless Beatles classic as a "Pink Floyd song written by Lennon/Macartney then filtered through the jaundiced sonic filter of Memoryhole". What results is pink cotton candy for the ears. "I've been a Beatles fan since 5th grade," says Buster, " and Dear Prudence is one of my top three favorite of their songs."
Buster Ballyhoo formed the hot rod band Drag King in 1996 in Seattle. They released singles on Tombstone Records and the CD "Four Track Mind." In 2000 Buster moved back to his hometown of New York City and put out three solo records including Hypnogod and Led Speciman. Memoryhole is his latest project and is being released on OrangeBeef Records based in New York.
Contact: orangebeefpress @yahoo.com for more info.
New Single by Memoryhole is a Tribute to 40th Anniversary of Beatles "White Album"
Memoryhole is a psychedelic low-fi experimental rock band based in New York City.
New York, NY, June 21, 2008 --(PR.com)-- Memoryhole's first single release is also a tribute to the 40th anniversary of the Beatles "White Album" with the recording of the song Dear Prudence. Buster Ballyhoo, singer and composer for the band, has described this treatment of the timeless Beatles classic as a "Pink Floyd song written by Lennon/Macartney then filtered through the jaundiced sonic filter of Memoryhole". What results is pink cotton candy for the ears. "I've been a Beatles fan since 5th grade," says Buster, " and Dear Prudence is one of my top three favorite of their songs."
Buster Ballyhoo formed the hot rod band Drag King in 1996 in Seattle. They released singles on Tombstone Records and the CD "Four Track Mind." In 2000 Buster moved back to his hometown of New York City and put out three solo records including Hypnogod and Led Speciman. Memoryhole is his latest project and is being released on OrangeBeef Records based in New York.
Contact: orangebeefpress @yahoo.com for more info.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
HOUSE FLOATS AND ANOTHER CRANE COLLAPSES IN DEVILSTOWN
First published on the internet at Ziffi.com. Go to : http://xiffi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=247:house-floats-and-another-crane-collapses-in-devilstown&catid=415:new-york&Itemid=76
by Andrew Arnett
Yesterday someone slipped a flyer under my door and I just figured it was another take out menu from the Chinese restaurant down the street. As I was leaving I took a glance at the flyer and on it was some gibberish from the Lumus Construction Company about the closing of West 141st from Convent Avenue to Amsterdam, which happens to be my street, for the relocation of the Hamilton Grange on the 7th of June. I had no time to decipher the meaning of the missive and chalked it up to just one more inconvenience in a life already laden with such things. As I walked down 141st street towards the A train I passed something on Convent Avenue which didn’t quite register in my brain immediately, for I was on the phone with my friend Borrick, and we were discussing logistical issues for our next assignment. As I turned to do a double take I was still not sure if my mind was playing tricks with me or not, but there in the middle of the street was an old fashioned two story house floating fifty feet up in the air. Indeed, it was being lifted up by wooden pile ons, but the scene was so surreal I felt as if I had wandered into a painting by Magritte. I was in a hurry at the time but made a note to snap a picture of the damn thing at the next opportunity.
When I returned later in the afternoon, they had lowered the house by thirty feet but it was still looming there over the street, and there was a news truck from NY One, as well as a crowd of pedestrians gathered to snap pictures. It turns out that this was the former residence of the founding father Alexander Hamilton built in 1802. Thirty years after Hamilton died in a duel with Aaron Burr, the house wound up in the possession of the St Luke’s Episcopal Church, who eventually moved it to its present location. The Parks department plan to move it to 140th street but preservationists want the house moved to its original location further southwest. One of the bystanders commented of this dispute as “a battle between strict constructionists and architectural activists- Hamilton would have loved it.”
The next morning my X girlfriend called me on the phone but that was 7am, and I couldn’t make a move to answer it. I was up until 4am working with my new Boss BR-600 digital recorder and trying out the new Korg Micro-synthesizer. At 10:30 I listened to the message she left about the latest crane collapse on the upper east side of Manhattan. Regardless of everything that has passed between us, she’s still looking out for me. Indeed, I’m a lucky guy in this regards. I decided to make haste of the situation and grabbed my camera and press badge. I got a coffee at the corner café and started moving eastward. The location of the crane accident was at 91st Street and 3rd Avenue, so it was a matter of getting on the 4 train, I knew this much. But where to catch that train was still a mystery to me. Since I’d moved to Harlem, I’ve stayed pretty much close to the west side and Riverside Drive where things are reasonable. Once you start going eastward however, things begin to get a little dicey. I decided to cut through St. Nicholas Park with its tall sweeping trees and granite hills and just a few hobos looked at me oddly, wondering what someone like me was doing there, and for a moment I began to wonder myself until I remembered that, of course, I was going to cover a major news event in Devilstown, for Xiffi.com.
This was the second crane collapse in town in two months. The last one killed six people and pancaked an entire five story brownstone into a mere three feet pile of cement dust. With this latest collapse, the radio this morning reported at least one death and two injured thus far. Where will this all end? This was hardly a matter of coincidence, for there was certainly more going on behind the scenes. Something akin to a flagrant disregard for human life was more like it.
It turns out you can’t catch the 4 train in Harlem, at least not above 125th Street. I discovered this fact after running around like a witless hyena for too long. During that time, I had missed the major press conference by Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Patterson at the sight of the wreckage. My X called to tell me that. To get to the 4 train, I was instructed by a cop to board a 2 train heading north, then change for the downtown 4 train at 138th St. in the Bronx. I ended up in the train yards instead, having mistakenly boarded the 1 train going to hell. Or so it seemed at the time. Instead of doing the story, I exited this maze of subway tunnels, hailed a cab, and instructed the driver to take me to a bar I new back on the west side that had air conditioning, cool drinks and a TV set to watch the story on television like other civilized people do.
Epilogue
This morning of June 7th, they moved the Hamilton Grange to its new home, just around the corner from its previous location and three blocks down the street from my house. It was a precise tactical maneuver which went off without a hitch. No deaths and/or no injuries reported. Also, in today’s paper, the headline read “CRANE BUST: INSPECTOR TOOK BRIBES”. The story stated that James Delayo, one of the city’s top crane inspectors, pocketed thousands of dollars in bribes from a construction firm and also sold copies of the crane-operator exam, according to authorities.
Yesterday someone slipped a flyer under my door and I just figured it was another take out menu from the Chinese restaurant down the street. As I was leaving I took a glance at the flyer and on it was some gibberish from the Lumus Construction Company about the closing of West 141st from Convent Avenue to Amsterdam, which happens to be my street, for the relocation of the Hamilton Grange on the 7th of June. I had no time to decipher the meaning of the missive and chalked it up to just one more inconvenience in a life already laden with such things. As I walked down 141st street towards the A train I passed something on Convent Avenue which didn’t quite register in my brain immediately, for I was on the phone with my friend Borrick, and we were discussing logistical issues for our next assignment. As I turned to do a double take I was still not sure if my mind was playing tricks with me or not, but there in the middle of the street was an old fashioned two story house floating fifty feet up in the air. Indeed, it was being lifted up by wooden pile ons, but the scene was so surreal I felt as if I had wandered into a painting by Magritte. I was in a hurry at the time but made a note to snap a picture of the damn thing at the next opportunity.
When I returned later in the afternoon, they had lowered the house by thirty feet but it was still looming there over the street, and there was a news truck from NY One, as well as a crowd of pedestrians gathered to snap pictures. It turns out that this was the former residence of the founding father Alexander Hamilton built in 1802. Thirty years after Hamilton died in a duel with Aaron Burr, the house wound up in the possession of the St Luke’s Episcopal Church, who eventually moved it to its present location. The Parks department plan to move it to 140th street but preservationists want the house moved to its original location further southwest. One of the bystanders commented of this dispute as “a battle between strict constructionists and architectural activists- Hamilton would have loved it.”
The next morning my X girlfriend called me on the phone but that was 7am, and I couldn’t make a move to answer it. I was up until 4am working with my new Boss BR-600 digital recorder and trying out the new Korg Micro-synthesizer. At 10:30 I listened to the message she left about the latest crane collapse on the upper east side of Manhattan. Regardless of everything that has passed between us, she’s still looking out for me. Indeed, I’m a lucky guy in this regards. I decided to make haste of the situation and grabbed my camera and press badge. I got a coffee at the corner café and started moving eastward. The location of the crane accident was at 91st Street and 3rd Avenue, so it was a matter of getting on the 4 train, I knew this much. But where to catch that train was still a mystery to me. Since I’d moved to Harlem, I’ve stayed pretty much close to the west side and Riverside Drive where things are reasonable. Once you start going eastward however, things begin to get a little dicey. I decided to cut through St. Nicholas Park with its tall sweeping trees and granite hills and just a few hobos looked at me oddly, wondering what someone like me was doing there, and for a moment I began to wonder myself until I remembered that, of course, I was going to cover a major news event in Devilstown, for Xiffi.com.
This was the second crane collapse in town in two months. The last one killed six people and pancaked an entire five story brownstone into a mere three feet pile of cement dust. With this latest collapse, the radio this morning reported at least one death and two injured thus far. Where will this all end? This was hardly a matter of coincidence, for there was certainly more going on behind the scenes. Something akin to a flagrant disregard for human life was more like it.
It turns out you can’t catch the 4 train in Harlem, at least not above 125th Street. I discovered this fact after running around like a witless hyena for too long. During that time, I had missed the major press conference by Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Patterson at the sight of the wreckage. My X called to tell me that. To get to the 4 train, I was instructed by a cop to board a 2 train heading north, then change for the downtown 4 train at 138th St. in the Bronx. I ended up in the train yards instead, having mistakenly boarded the 1 train going to hell. Or so it seemed at the time. Instead of doing the story, I exited this maze of subway tunnels, hailed a cab, and instructed the driver to take me to a bar I new back on the west side that had air conditioning, cool drinks and a TV set to watch the story on television like other civilized people do.
Epilogue
This morning of June 7th, they moved the Hamilton Grange to its new home, just around the corner from its previous location and three blocks down the street from my house. It was a precise tactical maneuver which went off without a hitch. No deaths and/or no injuries reported. Also, in today’s paper, the headline read “CRANE BUST: INSPECTOR TOOK BRIBES”. The story stated that James Delayo, one of the city’s top crane inspectors, pocketed thousands of dollars in bribes from a construction firm and also sold copies of the crane-operator exam, according to authorities.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
INCONSTANT (DOG) STAR
First published on the internet at: http://www.xiffi.com/index.php?view=article&catid=425%3Aflash-fiction&id=214%3Ainconstant-dog-star&option=com_content&Itemid=77
by Andrew Arnett
From atop my table top, I watch the fluorescent light of the television flicker in the half lit room. The rabbit ears antennae are crossed and Jay Leno is breaking up over the airwaves. How inconstant his jokes are, or at least inconsistent. I’m disappointed with television. It is the final joke, and it fails to amuse me any longer. When the airwaves are shut down at the beginning of ’09, I won’t bother to switch to digital. Let’s just let sleeping dogs lay. Let’s call it a day. It is time we cracked a book anyway. When is the last time I read a book from cover to cover? Not since they invented “Lost”, that’s for sure. God damn those cliff hanger endings. They leave me feeling uneasy, reaching for my bottle of Nyquil. Speaking of which, I do believe I need a refill. I’ve been nursing this cough since allergy season began. The pollen is mighty bad this year.
Sadie is sleeping on the couch. She is the brown pit bull we rescued off of Craig’s list a couple of months ago. She is happy to be alive, but she’s no fan of Jay Leno, that’s for sure. But she certainly likes to go for the walk. “Let’s go girl, we’re going out there, into the town.” She leaps off the couch like a gazelle. She dances around. She pulls the leash down from the wall. “Are you going to the store?” my girlfriend asks me. “Yes I am, dear.” “Good, could you get me a box of Milano cookies, a bar of pepper jack cheese, half a gallon of Silk chocolate soy milk, and one frozen Peppermint Paddy.” “Why, certainly dear.” I would get that woman anything including the moon if, of course, it came pre-packaged in individually wrapped, easy to carry to-go-boxes found exclusively in the dairy section of your local grocers.
We step out unto the streets. Sadie and I walk up Park Avenue. It is a descent part of town, but we nonetheless have to step over a couple of sleeping bums on our midnight perambulations. I have to admonish Sadie for attempting to urinate on one of the bums, regardless of how familiar the smell may be. Somewhere far above us, the dog star Sirius shines down. A crack deal goes down in an ally way at the corner of 34th street but that in no way detracts from the majesty of the night. We arrive at our local grocery store D’Agastinos, and this is where the hard part begins.
It is like a mine field in there, inside the modern grocery store. You have to step carefully, choose your groceries with meticulous care, or whoops, you are dead meat. We make our way down the aisles. The soup cans line the shelves like little tin grenades. All of them are filled with MSG. That stuff will instantly give you a migraine headache, and put you flat out on your back for five hours. And that’s the good part. Long term prognosis is obesity, diabetes, death. Move along then, perhaps to something fresh. The beef is injected with antibiotics, anabolic steroids, and growth hormones. And then of course you have the possibility of mad cow disease, which causes dementia in the human brain, or just good old fashioned e coli contamination. Same things go into the chicken, but there you’re looking at the possibility of salmonella or H5N1 avian flu. Yummy.
Now fish, there’s some good brain food. Indeed, except the high mercury levels can make you real stupid real fast. So then you may consider the farmed fish but then again you’re dealing with industrial levels of antibiotics. Now is a good time to re-affirm your commitment to vegetarianism. But low, check out the pesticides that all the bright green produce is bathed in. If you get something shipped in from a foreign country, like a South American orange, you may be lucky enough to have it laced with DDT. Who checks for this kind of thing anymore anyway? The three employees working for the EPA are usually on vacation. I once ate a mango from Thailand and my throat swelled up like a melon. Perhaps we would all be better with Monsanto’s genetically modified grain. At least that stuff has a patent number on it. On the way out I wanted a pack of gum, but then I considered the aspartame, and the brain legions, and I thought I’d rather not. Something to wet the whistle would be nice like a soda pop but then you have to deal with the sodium bicarbonates which cause a wasting away of the human body premature to its years. I decided to just stick to my Nyquil. You have to go with something you trust, in the long run.
When I got home the girlfriend was already asleep in the other room so the dog and I broke out the Milano cookies and ravaged those. It always amazes me how intelligent and sensitive this dog can be, as if she is in complete understanding of me and, at times, even understands the English language fluently. She looks at me with such knowing eyes. Just at the moment I was thinking these thoughts, Sadie stood up on her hind legs, just like a person would do, and then asked me politely in perfect English “could you be so kind as to pass me another Milano cookie Andrew, I find these delicacies perfectly irresistible.” I was about to absent mindedly just hand a cookie over when I began choking, aghast at the sheer absurdity of being confronted by a talking dog, in my own home no less. “Well hell no,” I stammered “I can’t do that, you’re a . . . you’re a . . . talking dog for Christ sakes.” “Now, now Andrew” she said “surely you can’t be that surprised, after all, you are well aware that all dogs lead a far more enlightened life than the average human being. We are much more humble, nurturing and eco-friendly than the vast majority of your species. The fact that we don’t communicate directly to humans is due to the lack of comprehension on the humans part. We are only having this conversation Andrew, because you have proven to be an enlightened member of your kind.” Well, it’s true that dogs don’t say much but when they do open up, it’s really hard to shut them up. Sadie proceeded to tell me the long history of dogs and how they in fact migrated on space ships from the constellation of Sirius some million years ago. After close to an hour of dialogue my girlfriend emerged from her room. “Are you talking to somebody,” she asked wearily. “Uh, no dear, just watching the TV.” Sadie curled up on the coach like a good dog, looked at me with a knowing wink, and didn’t say another word. Well, she wouldn’t believe me if I told her anyway.
end.
Monday, May 12, 2008
DEVILSTOWN IS ON FIRE
First published at http://www.xiffi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=179:devilstown-is-on-fire&catid=415:new-york&Itemid=76 )
by Andrew Arnett
I grew up in Devilstown and I’ve lived all over the damn place. And I’ve just moved again. This weekend. It was one of those emergency moves, a falling out with the girlfriend. These situations tend to bring out the worst in people, and so I fled the premises, under a veritable hail of hell fire. But I feel this was ultimately for the best, for all concerned, and I’m sure the neighbors would concur on this, having had more than their share of overheard skirmishes. But the battle of the sexes will never cease and this is ultimately just one more chapter in that sordid saga. I have to be thankful really for the luck I had in finding a place so soon. In a town like Devilstown, any enclosed space surrounded by four secure walls is premium real estate, especially in the borough of Manhattan. Even if it is Harlem, on the upper west side, it is to be coveted. And covet it I do. Like a snail with its shell. Sure, it is a far cry from Murray Hill, just south of the United Nations, in midtown Manhattan. But it certainly has its charms. There is a liveliness that is undisputable. Salsa music can be heard blaring out in the streets at all odd hours. Gangs of kids roving the city blocks whooping and hollering just for the joy of it. I am currently ensconced on the second floor of a prewar five story walk up, looking out of my window at the traffic rolling by on Amsterdam Avenue. Eighteen wheelers and city buses vie with city cabs for dominance of the road. It is my own personal Speed Racer movie, on tap at the mere flip of the Venetian blinds. I can’t get over the sheer electricity of the place. It is hard to ignore it. Now, sirens are blaring. Lots of sirens. Is this typical? It is certainly exhilarating. That’s for sure. There’s a smell that comes in with the breeze. It is an acrid smell, like the scent of fireworks on the Fourth of July. There is something burning. Perhaps it is my imagination, ruminating over the vestiges of another love affair gone up in smoke. But no, this is very distinct, and definitely real. I crank my head out the window and peer down the street, in the direction those fire trucks were heading. Something big is going on just a few blocks away, my keen journalistic instincts can sense it. Besides, the flashing lights are all parked right there.
Well, I was headed down that way anyway. It was time for dinner, and I was famished. I saw one of those Spanish style places when coming in from the subway, a place where the chicken carcasses spin on rotating spits right there in the window, dripping grease. It was enough to convince me that this was a place worthy of investigation, even if I had made a resolution towards vegetarianism. Either way I had better get going, grab my camera while I was at it for I was a journalist, and Devilstown was my beat, after all. And those fine people down at Xiffi.com, they were expecting something. They hadn’t heard nary a chicken scratch from me in the past two weeks. As far as they were concerned, I had fallen off the face of the earth. How could they know I was at the center of the cyclone, even if it was a cyclone of my own undoing. The good thing about covering a story like Devilstown though, is that it is like fishing with dynamite. It’s almost unfair how easy it is to find a newsworthy story, they literally jump into your window.
When I hit the streets, the rain was coming down in sheets. Two blocks away, on Amsterdam Ave., the fire trucks were lined up. I counted over twenty of them in all. Firemen huddled in groups on the sidelines with oxygen masks and pick axes waited while their brethren were battling the flames at the center of the vortex. I moved through the masses of spectators to get a closer look. The fire was raging on the fourth and fifth floor of a five story building on 144th street. The water hoses were going and two men on an extended truck ladder were face to face with the flames. Later, on radio station 1010 WINS, it was reported that this was a four alarm fire, with nine people injured and forty families displaced from their homes.
After that I headed over to the restaurant where the greasy chicken awaited me. Television news vans with their three story tall satellite poles lined the sidewalk. I walked by a Fox journalist doing a standup right in front of the eatery. I’m not sure what her name was, but she certainly was a FOX. I snapped a picture of that, got my food, and came back home to file this report.
end.
I grew up in Devilstown and I’ve lived all over the damn place. And I’ve just moved again. This weekend. It was one of those emergency moves, a falling out with the girlfriend. These situations tend to bring out the worst in people, and so I fled the premises, under a veritable hail of hell fire. But I feel this was ultimately for the best, for all concerned, and I’m sure the neighbors would concur on this, having had more than their share of overheard skirmishes. But the battle of the sexes will never cease and this is ultimately just one more chapter in that sordid saga. I have to be thankful really for the luck I had in finding a place so soon. In a town like Devilstown, any enclosed space surrounded by four secure walls is premium real estate, especially in the borough of Manhattan. Even if it is Harlem, on the upper west side, it is to be coveted. And covet it I do. Like a snail with its shell. Sure, it is a far cry from Murray Hill, just south of the United Nations, in midtown Manhattan. But it certainly has its charms. There is a liveliness that is undisputable. Salsa music can be heard blaring out in the streets at all odd hours. Gangs of kids roving the city blocks whooping and hollering just for the joy of it. I am currently ensconced on the second floor of a prewar five story walk up, looking out of my window at the traffic rolling by on Amsterdam Avenue. Eighteen wheelers and city buses vie with city cabs for dominance of the road. It is my own personal Speed Racer movie, on tap at the mere flip of the Venetian blinds. I can’t get over the sheer electricity of the place. It is hard to ignore it. Now, sirens are blaring. Lots of sirens. Is this typical? It is certainly exhilarating. That’s for sure. There’s a smell that comes in with the breeze. It is an acrid smell, like the scent of fireworks on the Fourth of July. There is something burning. Perhaps it is my imagination, ruminating over the vestiges of another love affair gone up in smoke. But no, this is very distinct, and definitely real. I crank my head out the window and peer down the street, in the direction those fire trucks were heading. Something big is going on just a few blocks away, my keen journalistic instincts can sense it. Besides, the flashing lights are all parked right there.
Well, I was headed down that way anyway. It was time for dinner, and I was famished. I saw one of those Spanish style places when coming in from the subway, a place where the chicken carcasses spin on rotating spits right there in the window, dripping grease. It was enough to convince me that this was a place worthy of investigation, even if I had made a resolution towards vegetarianism. Either way I had better get going, grab my camera while I was at it for I was a journalist, and Devilstown was my beat, after all. And those fine people down at Xiffi.com, they were expecting something. They hadn’t heard nary a chicken scratch from me in the past two weeks. As far as they were concerned, I had fallen off the face of the earth. How could they know I was at the center of the cyclone, even if it was a cyclone of my own undoing. The good thing about covering a story like Devilstown though, is that it is like fishing with dynamite. It’s almost unfair how easy it is to find a newsworthy story, they literally jump into your window.
When I hit the streets, the rain was coming down in sheets. Two blocks away, on Amsterdam Ave., the fire trucks were lined up. I counted over twenty of them in all. Firemen huddled in groups on the sidelines with oxygen masks and pick axes waited while their brethren were battling the flames at the center of the vortex. I moved through the masses of spectators to get a closer look. The fire was raging on the fourth and fifth floor of a five story building on 144th street. The water hoses were going and two men on an extended truck ladder were face to face with the flames. Later, on radio station 1010 WINS, it was reported that this was a four alarm fire, with nine people injured and forty families displaced from their homes.
After that I headed over to the restaurant where the greasy chicken awaited me. Television news vans with their three story tall satellite poles lined the sidewalk. I walked by a Fox journalist doing a standup right in front of the eatery. I’m not sure what her name was, but she certainly was a FOX. I snapped a picture of that, got my food, and came back home to file this report.
end.
Monday, April 28, 2008
SEAN BELL TOLLS FOR THEE
(first published at: http://www.xiffi.com/index.php?view=article&catid+303%3Acrime&id=161%3Asean-bell-tolls-for-thee&option=com_content&Itemid=70 )
by Andrew Arnett
Yesterday
I knew the Sean Bell verdict was to be decided today, but I didn’t think it would be this early, at least not before the morning dog walk and certainly not before that first cup of coffee. But there it was, first thing I saw when I turned on NY One News at 8:40am – “Breaking News: Police in Sean Bell Case Acquitted of All Charges”. I didn’t expect that verdict. Nobody expected that verdict, not even the cops, I would guess. With a verdict like that, it looked to be another big news day in Devilstown. Of course, in a situation like this, there was always someone bound to be upset. But the clearing of all three defendants of all charges would certainly tip the emotional scale into the deep end. Tempers were going to be stoked. There were already fears this might turn into another Rodney King affair. Now, that concern seemed more palpable.
What next? After the verdict, the family of Sean Bell, accompanied by Reverend Al Sharpton, stormed out of the court house, abruptly canceling all scheduled press conferences. There would be no statements made. The silence was, of course, deafening. The entourage chose, rather, to go to the grave sight of Sean Bell and commensurate and, I would suspect, plan their next move.
No statement had as of yet come from the Mayors office, and since the Bell family had left Kew Gardens, I figured the news could be found at City Hall. I was wrong. Sure, I made it down there quick enough, but found nothing there except for the usual suspects. No media, no television news vans, protesters, nothing. But this story was far from over, I just needed to catch up with it. I decided to go into Kew Gardens after all, and I knew that the F-train could take me there, even though I had never been there before. It is true that I did grow up in New York City but most of Queens and even parts of Brooklyn were as foreign to me as northern Mongolia. And Staten Island may as well be a moon circling Neptune for that matter. By this time I had wandered into Chinatown, so I asked someone who looked like a local where I could catch the F train and he told me to “walk in that direction for about ten or fifteen minutes or so.” By my estimates that would put me on the shores of Brooklyn, if I could walk on water. I negotiated my way past vendors selling dried dragon fish and spicy squid and shop windows displaying Fuchow Mimosa Moon Cakes and jackfruit until another helpful soul told me that I was heading in the right direction, just take a right on East Broadway then walk two blocks. I must admit I was tempted to veer into the Wing Shoow Seafood Restaurant for a taste of their Hong Kong Blue Crab Taco but suddenly caught sight of the subway entrance right across the street of the Sun Light Bakery Corporation so I decided to soldier forward for I am, after all, a professional.
By the time I got to Kew Gardens it was getting close to noon, and though the police barricades were still up around the court house and the cops were still out en mass, it seemed the angry mob of hundreds I had seen on TV in the morning had dissipated. The television news vans were there as well, but the crews were all on break. There didn’t seem to be any major riots breaking out, that’s for sure, and aside from two minor scuffles earlier on, this was far from being a Rodney King flashback. At least not just yet.
I was in Los Angeles in 1992 when those riots broke out. I was attending a music school and living in Hollywood the day the judge acquitted the cops in that horrific beating they threw on poor Rodney King. The verdict itself seemed to ignite a fire that turned L.A. into one huge Molotov cocktail. Over three thousand fires were started in three day’s, reaching into the Hollywood Hills and that enclave of the upper crust, Beverly Hills 90125. But the logistics of that circumstance proved to be very different from that found in our city. One factor is the layout of the two cities. Los Angeles is flat and spread out with many freeways intersecting it. When the Bloods and the Crips united to lay waste to L.A., they just loaded up their cars with Molotov cocktails and fanned out into the different sections, tossing the bombs from their cars without needing to even slow down. They moved like ghost riders in the night and no one got caught. If such a thing were to take place in New York, cars would quickly get snarled in grid lock. Of course the subways are the quickest way to get around here, but seriously folks, how many Molotov cocktails can a person carry on the train before things start looking suspicious.
Today
Today I made a concerted effort to get on top of the story. There was a rally scheduled to take place at 9am at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network Headquarters located on 145th Street and Malcom X Boulevard, then at 10am the Sean Bell family were scheduled to speak. When I arrived the streets were full of protesters and cops and the media was ubiquitous. The rally itself was taking place inside the headquarters so the throng waited anxiously in the streets for Sharpton’s next move. I pressed myself up against the window to try and get a glimpse of Sharpton while agitators shouted out slogans. One guy in dreadlocks chanted “Every dollar is a bullet. Hold back that black dollar . . . burn baby burn, burn their pocket.” This was by no means a strictly black thing, there were many white protestors in the crowd as well, and I felt no personal pressures based on skin color. This was more a rally against the system, and a desire for change there. Another man chanted “No justice, no profit, keep your money in your pocket . . .boycott, boycott!” It seemed that it might take some time before Sharpton would emerge from his lair, so I decided to slip into the Dunkin Donuts next door for some coffee. The establishment was a flurry of activity with protesters and press passes flapping about, but the Pakistani run establishment was delighted by the infusion of business. It would seem that the boycott may start soon, but not just yet, at least not until everyone had gotten their donuts and latte’s.Back outside, it seemed that things were coming to a head. They were lining protestors up in preparation for a march down Malcom X Boulevard towards 125th Street. The organizers had fashioned fifty placards, each with a number from one to fifty, representing the number of bullets fired in the Sean Bell incident. I was asked to hold one of the numbers but respectfully declined. I wanted to remain a fly on the wall, an impartial observer to the scene.
I continued to scribble overheard conversations into my notebook. One man said “We should have listened to Marcus Garvey and gotten the hell out of here.” Another person said “Malcom X said I don’t want them to give me anything because those Indian givers will just take it back.” Then, another kindly gentleman asked me if I could hold the placard with the number 24 on it, for just a moment. I said “sure”. And then the march began. Suddenly I was swept with the rest of the protestors down the Boulevard. Now I had become part of the story. Was this a compromise of my journalistic integrity, a blurring of objectivity? What the hell, at least it was a front row seat to the event. Hell, I was sitting on the stage. Later that night, on the CBS Evening News, I saw the number 24 march down the street in Harlem.
end.
by Andrew Arnett
Yesterday
I knew the Sean Bell verdict was to be decided today, but I didn’t think it would be this early, at least not before the morning dog walk and certainly not before that first cup of coffee. But there it was, first thing I saw when I turned on NY One News at 8:40am – “Breaking News: Police in Sean Bell Case Acquitted of All Charges”. I didn’t expect that verdict. Nobody expected that verdict, not even the cops, I would guess. With a verdict like that, it looked to be another big news day in Devilstown. Of course, in a situation like this, there was always someone bound to be upset. But the clearing of all three defendants of all charges would certainly tip the emotional scale into the deep end. Tempers were going to be stoked. There were already fears this might turn into another Rodney King affair. Now, that concern seemed more palpable.
What next? After the verdict, the family of Sean Bell, accompanied by Reverend Al Sharpton, stormed out of the court house, abruptly canceling all scheduled press conferences. There would be no statements made. The silence was, of course, deafening. The entourage chose, rather, to go to the grave sight of Sean Bell and commensurate and, I would suspect, plan their next move.
No statement had as of yet come from the Mayors office, and since the Bell family had left Kew Gardens, I figured the news could be found at City Hall. I was wrong. Sure, I made it down there quick enough, but found nothing there except for the usual suspects. No media, no television news vans, protesters, nothing. But this story was far from over, I just needed to catch up with it. I decided to go into Kew Gardens after all, and I knew that the F-train could take me there, even though I had never been there before. It is true that I did grow up in New York City but most of Queens and even parts of Brooklyn were as foreign to me as northern Mongolia. And Staten Island may as well be a moon circling Neptune for that matter. By this time I had wandered into Chinatown, so I asked someone who looked like a local where I could catch the F train and he told me to “walk in that direction for about ten or fifteen minutes or so.” By my estimates that would put me on the shores of Brooklyn, if I could walk on water. I negotiated my way past vendors selling dried dragon fish and spicy squid and shop windows displaying Fuchow Mimosa Moon Cakes and jackfruit until another helpful soul told me that I was heading in the right direction, just take a right on East Broadway then walk two blocks. I must admit I was tempted to veer into the Wing Shoow Seafood Restaurant for a taste of their Hong Kong Blue Crab Taco but suddenly caught sight of the subway entrance right across the street of the Sun Light Bakery Corporation so I decided to soldier forward for I am, after all, a professional.
By the time I got to Kew Gardens it was getting close to noon, and though the police barricades were still up around the court house and the cops were still out en mass, it seemed the angry mob of hundreds I had seen on TV in the morning had dissipated. The television news vans were there as well, but the crews were all on break. There didn’t seem to be any major riots breaking out, that’s for sure, and aside from two minor scuffles earlier on, this was far from being a Rodney King flashback. At least not just yet.
I was in Los Angeles in 1992 when those riots broke out. I was attending a music school and living in Hollywood the day the judge acquitted the cops in that horrific beating they threw on poor Rodney King. The verdict itself seemed to ignite a fire that turned L.A. into one huge Molotov cocktail. Over three thousand fires were started in three day’s, reaching into the Hollywood Hills and that enclave of the upper crust, Beverly Hills 90125. But the logistics of that circumstance proved to be very different from that found in our city. One factor is the layout of the two cities. Los Angeles is flat and spread out with many freeways intersecting it. When the Bloods and the Crips united to lay waste to L.A., they just loaded up their cars with Molotov cocktails and fanned out into the different sections, tossing the bombs from their cars without needing to even slow down. They moved like ghost riders in the night and no one got caught. If such a thing were to take place in New York, cars would quickly get snarled in grid lock. Of course the subways are the quickest way to get around here, but seriously folks, how many Molotov cocktails can a person carry on the train before things start looking suspicious.
Today
Today I made a concerted effort to get on top of the story. There was a rally scheduled to take place at 9am at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network Headquarters located on 145th Street and Malcom X Boulevard, then at 10am the Sean Bell family were scheduled to speak. When I arrived the streets were full of protesters and cops and the media was ubiquitous. The rally itself was taking place inside the headquarters so the throng waited anxiously in the streets for Sharpton’s next move. I pressed myself up against the window to try and get a glimpse of Sharpton while agitators shouted out slogans. One guy in dreadlocks chanted “Every dollar is a bullet. Hold back that black dollar . . . burn baby burn, burn their pocket.” This was by no means a strictly black thing, there were many white protestors in the crowd as well, and I felt no personal pressures based on skin color. This was more a rally against the system, and a desire for change there. Another man chanted “No justice, no profit, keep your money in your pocket . . .boycott, boycott!” It seemed that it might take some time before Sharpton would emerge from his lair, so I decided to slip into the Dunkin Donuts next door for some coffee. The establishment was a flurry of activity with protesters and press passes flapping about, but the Pakistani run establishment was delighted by the infusion of business. It would seem that the boycott may start soon, but not just yet, at least not until everyone had gotten their donuts and latte’s.Back outside, it seemed that things were coming to a head. They were lining protestors up in preparation for a march down Malcom X Boulevard towards 125th Street. The organizers had fashioned fifty placards, each with a number from one to fifty, representing the number of bullets fired in the Sean Bell incident. I was asked to hold one of the numbers but respectfully declined. I wanted to remain a fly on the wall, an impartial observer to the scene.
I continued to scribble overheard conversations into my notebook. One man said “We should have listened to Marcus Garvey and gotten the hell out of here.” Another person said “Malcom X said I don’t want them to give me anything because those Indian givers will just take it back.” Then, another kindly gentleman asked me if I could hold the placard with the number 24 on it, for just a moment. I said “sure”. And then the march began. Suddenly I was swept with the rest of the protestors down the Boulevard. Now I had become part of the story. Was this a compromise of my journalistic integrity, a blurring of objectivity? What the hell, at least it was a front row seat to the event. Hell, I was sitting on the stage. Later that night, on the CBS Evening News, I saw the number 24 march down the street in Harlem.
end.
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