T Wrecks

Has anyone taken the train at 4 AM lately? The population is a pretty accurate socio-economic profile of New York. There are the few Mexican restaurant workers brown-bagging it on the way uptown from their below-minimum-wage restaurant jobs; one or two homeless black men monologuing away; the token Untouchable shrouded in hefty bags with various carts chock full of cans, bottles, rags, newspaper and garbage asleep in the safe florescent warmth of an MTA semi-private-- several square meters space around him for the stench. Next but not least, there are the straggling, drunk, xanaxed club girls--- Balenciaga shoes, Prada bags-- slumming it on the 1 or the 6 train up from ecstasy to their parental-sponsored apartments on the Upper East..cellphones misplaced, wallets lost. Loud they are, these girls… either from the habit of talking on cellphones over the music, or just drunk. Some of them have jumped turnstiles--- the cops will just smile…because their credit cards are scattered on some dance floor like a post-modern collage. The train is an adventure. They are bold and unafraid. They have been date-raped and live to tell.

Oh— of course there is yours truly, the observer-- diligently dragging my guitar and whatever the chef could spoon into an aluminum take-out container for late-night sustenance— protecting the girls, representing the disappearing working class-- entertaining myself with the homeless mime-acts which are at least original compared to whatever is waiting at home on late-night cable. I prefer my reality MTA-TV. Last night this guy was actually sticking a toothpick all the way into his ear… and then checking it for… God knows. Much itching and scratching and hair-picking, shoe and sock removal and muttering about B.B. King. How could he have known? The random psychic synchronicities at 4 AM. Trains stop at this hour for long minutes; no one seems to complain; the girls twist their hair and remove their Balenciagas. Between 59th and 96th no one boards. We ride on; the toothpick man applauds each stop...has learned not to take motion for granted.

The rest of the regular New Yorkers are home passing their Ambien-laced troubled hours dreaming about collection agents and looming mortgage debt. About how to get their kids a reasonable education, about bedbugs, their dwindling pensions-- the consequences of corporate takeovers for the mere padding of these club girls’ family fortunes. About the looming comfort of suicide when middle age is lowering their earning capacity like Bear Stearns share-values. About getting through the next day.

So here we are in New Year’s Eve. I’m off tonight while New York parties on. I’ve asked a few casually what their plans are….of course the parents of these Prada girls are off in St. Barts’ so the apartments will be well-stocked with stumbling young adults. The upscale restaurants are full, the tourists are having a last hurrah. The cute kid with dreadlocks who works at my gym is thinking about his new baby, and how he can move from cleaning bathrooms to getting enough schooling to learn how to use a computer. The Africans who work at my neighborhood thrift store… they’re doing the overnight, taking inventory and re-plastering the leaking ceiling. Smiling. The doormen on Park Avenue… they’ll be reaping. They compete for these nights. It’s warm… I should take advantage and go see the ball drop —one more time. That phrase gets me.

I miss the old East Village. I miss the artistic psychos and the trend-setters and dirty brilliance. Edgy film-makers were not red-carpet-ready but wearing smelly jeans and scuffed motorcycle boots. Drugs came in rolling papers and needles… alcohol in brown bags and barely-washed glasses. People were painting and singing things. Using coins to call their boyfriends from phonebooths and slamming heavy receivers in emotional pain.

My son is out--- his first legal-drinking New Year’s Eve. He is in that small window where suddenly he is old enough to screw the Victoria’s Secret models and his future is like a department store free-for-all. Where he doesn’t realize one post-partying day he’ll wake up and this year’s model will look young and maybe his own face looks a little puffy and his hair is losing that teenage shine.

Four hours to go in this year. I feel like sitting it out and feeling time. Watched the eclipse last week in the cold air… took a while, but that old moon came through unscathed. Like nothing. No scars, no memories. For us here it’s all running together now… the acceleration of the future, the boulder getting bigger, rolling downhill breakneck and you can’t stop it--- you can maybe only comment, yell Happy New Year out of the rear window as the 2011 train comes speeding by and almost takes your breath away heading for 3000, 4000…no brakes on the present-- only you and I —we are already relics of the new year, ruins of the old… our photos on pathetic Facebook while those assholes bank our loneliness, our pasts trying to reconcile with the present, losing the future, eclipsed.

To all those who died at 27: you fooled no one. Still, we salute you, we the sad scanners of our own obsolescence. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Or would we?

Auld Lang Syne.

Pearls Before Swine

I have the Swine flu. I like saying that. It’s not Pig or Boar or Porcine but Swine. Sounds biblical, judgmental. Trust me, it is hellish. Tylenol keeps the fever down to a manageable 101 degrees but I am too congested to sleep and the cough is excruciating. My doctor advised me to be admitted to the hospital, but fear of uncovered charges exceeds fear of death. Then again, there is a folding table on my corner with signs and leaflets warning DEATH TO OBAMA(‘s healthplan). And NOBAMA. As a victim of healthcare, I no longer know what to think. I fail to see the evils of the Canadian system. And I grew up believing that Tampax should be government-supplied. Plenty of free condoms in the schools. I support that. In fact I support anything free.

Debt used to be free. The right to owe money. Borrowing....loans, yes, there is an agreed-upon price, but the condition of debt used to be free. Anyone could get there. Now it can cost you your home. Why? Because a huge percentage of our fictitious GNP was predicated on marketing this debt. Enormous profits were reaped marketing this. And someone had to take the rap...why not punish the poor schmucks? What more brilliant, more Satanic scheme could there be? Like selling ‘death’ to Americans. Has anyone read the most recent Saramago novel? Where immortality actually threatens a country and black-market industries arise to smuggle living people across a border so they can die? Maybe Bernie Madoff is reading this in his jailcell. Certainly he will have access to a kindle and other luxuries. I’ll bet the room is larger than many New York City apartments.

Private equity companies are preparing to reap huge profits on the toxic loans they are buying up like penny candy. They will market debt. Why not have a daily average, a figure… like pork futures, metals--- debt. The new commodity. Of course poor schmucks like me are putting their 4-figure life-savings accounts into fractional-percentage point safety accounts. We must sit on the sidelines watching the high-rollers play. We get to serve the Red Bull for coin tips. Or not.

Poor law-abiding citizens still fear debt. Neither a borrower nor a lender be. I am a giver. But I am also stupid. My neighbor caused the downfall of a great Wall Street institution. He committed heinous financial crimes. Employees lost their lifetime pensions. But he and his family still smell like roses, even if it is artificial rose stench. Their windows are clean and sparkling and their housekeepers are better groomed than I will ever be. They are spending weeks on the French Riviera. Their cavernous apartment with no books is vacant. My windows are filthy. My non-airconditioned shelves and piles of books are dull and over-handled. I have seen the Hudson and East Rivers several times in passing this summer, and my house doesn’t sparkle. Cleanliness has become an urban economic marker. Rich people have enormous, dust-free, freshly-painted spaces, and poor people have musty and dusty things everywhere-- things they might need, clothes they might wear. We are afraid to discard that which may be unaffordable in the future, or that which may have marketable value on ebay. Oh poor schmucks, throw out your trash. Or take it to a thrift store. Odds are nothing you own is going to be worthy of airtime on Antique Roadshow. And it may be harboring Swine flu germs.

Maybe it was that penny I picked up in the street. Or the cherry the fruit vendor offered me to taste. Or the $1 pretzel on 8th Avenue. The girl who swiped her runny nose before clamping the takeout lid on my morning coffee. My rich neighbor sees me coming from the library. ‘Aren’t you afraid of germs?’ she asks me, totally deadpan. I am afraid of fear, I tell her. What I don’t say is I am afraid of hospital bills and uncovered blood tests. I am afraid of my own health insurance company’s unchecked right to raise rates so the CEO's kids can have their king-sized bathrooms custom-sterilized daily by women in crisply laundered uniforms. So they don't contract Swine flu. I am beginning to fear my own anger because my skin feels hot enough to crackle.

When I was a sophomore in college, my adorable boyfriend gave me a baby pig for Valentine’s Day. It was cute and smart and pinkish. And then it began to grow. To eat, and snort and cavort around with enough force to destroy furniture. So we drove it up to Vermont where it ballooned into a 900-pound fatty and ended up in installments in the oven of this hippy farmer family who could no longer afford the slops. Roasts and bacon and tripe kept them warm through the winter. They never got Swine flu.

I am more inclined to believe this influenza comes from the real Swine… the Wall Street pigs and the biotech companies who are going to rake a huge profit from the vaccine. Ditto Roche, who makes Tamiflu, though I recall reading in the New York Times back in January that Tamiflu is completely ineffective against this particular strain of influenza. In Canada, this is common knowledge. It seems to me they were still handing out Tamiflu to those Queens high school students like candy all through the spring. Or am I hallucinating? Does anyone recall that Rumsfeld was a huge shareholder and profited enormously from the Avian flu scare just a few short years ago?

I’ll probably live. Although had I gone to the hospital, who knows? As they say, if it’s not another thing, it’s one. Oink.

Pigeon-sure

There’s an article in this week’s New Yorker about confidence and its relevance to the Bear Stearns collapse vis-a-vis that bastard Cayne. Hard for me to assess those people because, pacifist that I am, I’d like to bring back corporal punishment for anyone who profited from the defective House of Cards engineered by Wall Streeters who hold an all-ace deck while honest American investing schmucks came up with jokers on their monthly statement. And have to kiss their tax-dollars as they go into the pockets of these ‘confidence’ men.

I gave my son a copy of that film ‘Confidence’. Not quite new, but entertaining. He is a confidence expert. In fact I will go further and say he is a pretty consistent liar. According to the article, the confidence game pays. So what makes these people tick? The size of their dicks as the New Yorker seemed to suggest with the article title, ‘Cocksure’? I know among teenage boys this gives them cause to swagger. Among women…well, size unfortunately does matter. At least it gives you reason to relax. And if the guy happens to be a non-swaggerer, well, you’ve got one less thing to miss when things go sour.

Size matters re: bank accounts, real estate square footage, height. The Tall Man usually wins? Not too many powerful politicians who are short. First ladies are generally tall…fashion models…even art has become larger and larger—billboard size, actually.
See me, it has to say.

Still, some big things are small. Low numbers in New York real estate addresses connote proximity to the park…status. Small number dress sizes are sought after. Portions which sell for huge sums in New York restaurants get smaller and smaller. Rich people with large balances eat small portions and weigh in at lower numbers. They want their license plate to read ‘CSW 1’. I’ll bet some of them pay for a 3-digit social security number.

Personally I think the national metabolism has slowed down. People are fat not just because of supersized meals and brainwashing food marketing, but because we are all lazier and slower. We are no longer the gas guzzlers we used to be. We scarcely move. Our bodies adapt to workouts. People don’t run for the phone, don’t move to the desk to get paper and pen, use their arms to write, lick and seal an envelope and walk down to the corner to post things. We stay in one place. My son is not just a liar but a lier. He’s lazy. He lies about lying, too.

Emails are becoming shorter. Trillions are passed around, but no one bothers to write much. Relationships are shorter. People text each other to death and are sick of the whole thing in days. Fuck eharmony. How many of these people are retreads?

There’s a pigeon on the air conditioner across my courtyard. It’s shat its own weight and more since spring. It comes back there every day, no GPS. It had an affair, oversaw its mate laying an egg and sitting it out on the shitwalled nest, jumped around its young until the little guy flew away. Through the 9 inches of June rain. In fact, it’s still there-- solo-- even though its mate seems to have flown the coop. Ditto the brat. It may be a terrible housekeeper but it sets an example for relationships my son could use. Unlike his mother.

I look out and admire the pigeon, and then feel a little edgy about my own sub-par housekeeping. The thing is, a low maintenance poverty-line lifestyle actually takes an enormous amount of high-maintenance energy. Cheap cleaning supplies are a bus and train ride away as is reasonably priced mayonnaise and gallons of milk. Not necessarily the same bus and train, either, when you are really doing a $4-a-day financial diet. Nothing is a cab-ride away because I don’t take cabs, and there’s the extra lugging and the tedious penny-pinching and coin-counting and coupon-clipping and card punching. Emptying and recycling vacuum-cleaner bags--- a dirty little secret of the truly prideful poor. Then there is clinic-waiting and the endless referrals and medical insurance paperwork and price comparison and pre-qualification. And fighting with Welfare for NOT taking benefits for which I qualify. Poverty is a full-time job.

Then there are the true low-lifes who just pulled a $48 million Medicaid swindle. When my latest routine biopsy had to be endured without anesthesia because the copay was more than my monthly food budget.

I watched my son play basketball tonight… the league is a non-profit but I calculated it costs $18 a game to watch him lose. Maybe, I suggested, if you didn’t lie about lying so much and you had to pay me $1 for every shot you missed, you’d practice. Of course I didn’t actually say it out loud. I don’t want to mess with his confidence.

Obama's Baby

For some reason I think a lot about that film Rosemary’s Baby which I saw at a very impressionable age. I can’t pass Central Park West and 72nd Street without thinking about it, even though I was there the night John Lennon was shot. Even though I had the good fortune to have had friends in the building and had actually seen the inside of the Lennon home. Still, I think about that fictional nymphy girl with the extreme short Sassoon haircut eating raw meat over her sink in what is now a $1600/per square foot kitchen.

I guess it was my first experience with a conspiracy theory, the paranoid concept that the world is evil, and if you try to resist or prove the contrary, you’ll be not only deemed insane but dangerous. Except for that one person whose name is an impossible anagram and lies unconscious in a hospital or fortress somewhere or buried underground.

Of course a major portion of TV series, movies and best-sellers deal with the same scenario. Kind of an Alfred Hitchcock thing. But somehow a poor waify pregnant girl with the baby voice lost in Manhattan represented a loss of innocence for me. At the time, I trusted no one. I spoke to no one. When I could sleep, I had bad dreams. I found myself day after day standing on Central Park West, staring up at the gargoyles and dark walls, as though some kind of rational experience could undo the Rosemary’s Baby spell.

I was up in Harlem today. I had to deposit a check at the bank and pay my Con Ed bill. The bank is kind of a new branch. Maybe a year old. On Lenox/Malcolm X Blvd. So which stop to make first? Con Ed was packed. Lines out the door. 4:30 PM. At the bank there was not a soul. Not a sound. Two nicely dressed investment counselor/bank managers in their brand new spacious cubicles, 3 well-dressed ladies behind the teller windows. All Afro-American. Everyone looked when I came in. Business? Just a small deposit. It was efficient and quick. And quiet. The quietest place I’ve experienced in Manhattan in years. Including my own now-childless apartment. Including the library. Dead quiet.

On to Con Ed. Fortunately there are machines here now…computers which take your checking account and routing number and receipt your payment. Not a soul at these 4 machines. The rest? A slowly snaking line of more than 200 fidgety non-white people waiting to use cash to pay their gas and electric because it costs $5 to use your debit card. And only Mastercard is accepted. With the same $5 fee. The same reason I came in to pay. Save a stamp. Avoid the penalty because like lucky Americans now I’m paying priority bills at the last possible second. It was as noisy as a rush-hour subway station. As packed with stressed-out people. Gone are the days of living a month in advance.

It pisses me off that Verizon bills a month in advance for phone service and if you’re late with the payment, they get $5 extra. Even though the service period has not begun. Even though the service sucks and it’s noisy and overpriced and absurd to pay $100 a month for something which with our technology should be near-free. If you complain, they’ll be happy to cancel service. For which you get another huge bill which if you don’t pay will ruin your credit and the rest of your life if it hasn’t already been ruined by one of the 49,000 Americans who each have more than 500 million of what used to be your money in their personal accounts.

Whatever.

But while you’re waiting on the Con Ed line, and the bread line, and the subway platforms waiting for less frequent trains in a broken system because all the money is in the battered portfolios of the MTA management who feel a little ‘stressed’ this Christmas season--- instead of all that Sudoku and word finding, why don’t people start anagramming Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and Citibank and coming up with some Ira Levin-worthy solutions? How about that Henry Paulson? How come he’s so hoarse all the time? In fact the whole Federal Reserve stinks of a financial version of tannis-root and coven-meetings.

I just pray, to whatever God or anti-God I can summon here on the corner of 72nd and Central Park West, that my new President has Netflix and a taste for 60’s horror.

Dear Andrew

Ahh… poor pathetic AIG has now become the poster-child for corporate greed. They have been ordered to suspend their $600 million bonus fund. Poor Mr. Sullivan. And you know about poster children. The real victims are not even camera-ready. They’re festering, stewing in greed, still lunching in Armani while they consider passing on the private jet for Christmas vacation. Call me, Andrew Cuomo. Call me.

First of all, I’d like to know what kind of accounting principles Henry Paulson is using. The Goldman Sachs kind, apparently. As for me, before I’d lend a friend my last $20, I’d have to be pretty sure he doesn’t have a few Ferraris in the garage. Here’s a hint: you can’t spell Goldman without G-O-L-D. Call me.

I’ve got a notice from HRA in my mailbox. The second one. Apparently someone shared my tax return with them. The one that was so pathetic, I didn’t qualify for an economic stimulus check. I was counting on that, to buy my teenage son a graduation laptop. The IRS assumes anyone in my income bracket is receiving welfare benefits, and no matter what they give me, my thrift-shop buying is not going to stimulate the economy. I am forced to submit my 1040 to receive my Child Health Plus package (thank you Hillary!). This year, as last, I am too poor to be billed. I also have a brain and another commodity which is not only obsolete but worthless in the current atmosphere: a conscience. I have an apartment. I have my guitars and I know how to use them. I am struggling, day by day, week by week, to keep up payments. I had a retirement fund. This has been decimated to the point where I must live to an age of invalidity in order to collect what I’d put in. I don’t have a cellphone, Andrew, but I’ve got Verizon. Call me. It's local. I don’t receive benefits.

And how about this? I owe no one. I have no debt. I have no nice or even acceptable clothing, no heels on my shoes, a near-empty pantry. I do have mice. In my funky old prewar building which is now on the Corcoran list of Luxury Residences…due to endless renovations by the AIG and Bear Stearns unduly rewarded…I have mice, I have leaks, I have holes. Despite the fact that they are manipulating our old co-op like an overpriced Biotech company and demanding millions from shareholders…they cannot seem to find the cash in their pocket to patch the most recent hole they made in my ceiling. One of them even sued the co-op because we complained about his illegal and damaging renovation. Does the Attorney General's office respond? The government does not intervene in the corporation I live in. Not until it's bankrupt and in ruins. If I were being played by Steve McQueen, I’d eat the mice.

Let me say something else. Being hungry makes you cranky. It makes you less generous with sympathy. Especially sympathy for the rich. What about me, Presidential candidates? What about the proud hard-working poor…we who scarcely pay more than self-employment tax, who don’t ‘burden the system’, who share our stale bread with the homeless guys on the corner, who walk for a couple of days each month to postpone the cost of the monthly Metro card into the next billing cycle?

Yesterday I walked 3 miles to hand-deliver a birthday card because it saved me 42 cents. I pay my gas bill every 3 months because the finance charge is less than the stamps I’d have to use. I know about 'cutting the fat'. So how about hiring me to balance the AIG budget? I’m available. I’m smart. I don’t use the word deficit. I work per diem. Cheap. You can be sure I’d have found a good use for the $600 million. You can be sure their customers whose homes have been destroyed by hurricanes and floods would have a little cash.

Every morning I listen to the baffled BBC interviewees on the state of the world markets. The whole economy is tanked, let’s face it. My life is not much different than it was… yes, I’m losing work. I’m still terrified. Next week I must factor in Halloween candy. Do food stamps cover candy? Is that 'kosher'? Certainly not a sound nutritional investment. But soon it will be Christmas. A tree? I’m hungry. Eggs are out of my budget now. Rice is a luxury. I’ve stood outside a café several times this month with my hoodie on, waiting for them to put out leftover bread. Pride? Do I have pride? Why do my neighbors flash cash at the doormen when their Global Equity positions have caused suffering on a global and inequitable scale? Is that pride? Call me, Andrew.

Do they really want to restore CONFIDENCE? If I were getting Jon Stewart’s salary, I’d laugh. Here’s my question: Why are they letting the criminals jury their own trial? Never in all my educational or historical experience, except possibly the most corrupt African nations…was this kind of thing going on. Is this the new version of justice? Let’s face it… if someone kidnaps your child, holds him ransom for everything you own…are you going to let him go when he’s caught in the next heinous act? Are you going to let him keep what he stole? It’s not like I’m asking for anything except simple, Biblical Justice. Human Decency. The Law.

Why are they not rounding up the criminals and corralling them in their own bank vaults? Why is no one staging some large-scale political version of Dog Day Afternoon? I live in a building with these people who essentially spent their co-workers’ pensions on lunches. And they have money. They are all being paid. They are living on huge accounts built with massive bonuses.

Come on Andrew…you can do better. Every single one of these guys needs to put it back. And no, John McCain, this is not SPREADING THE WEALTH AROUND, this is putting back what you stole. It was a long party… and so much of the money has been spent, those bastards. Punishment? Yes, they deserve it. On a global scale. But first? Make them give it back. Every single penny. I’ll do the books. I’m great at it. I’ve don’t even know what a vacation looks like. No expensive junkets for my team. We'll eat stale bread for lunch. Hey...I’m living in a Corcoran-designated Luxury Residence just footsteps from Central Park and putting a kid through college on a poverty-level income. I know how to put extra notches in a belt. Call me.

As for the AIG guys and the other Investment Wizards: Let them eat mice.

P.S.: Does it occur to anyone that if we hadn’t been so obsessed with crucifying Spitzer for personal indiscretion, someone might have had an eye on the true Satans of Wall Street?

We are not in Kansas anymore

I don’t know about the rest of America, but I’m getting ticked off. New York City’s in a slump. We’ve never had so many babies, so much competition for the few spaces in private schools, so little money for public education, controversial rezoning, a budget deficit the size of a small galaxy, crumbling infrastructure, winter coming on, Brett Favre is maybe injured, the Knicks look like amateurs, and my co-op board, some of whom have caused the largest-scale financial heist ever in the name of Free Capitalism, are flexing their pathetic muscles in the face of their poorer but less guilty neighbors.

What is there to look forward to? Obama’s numbers are shaky, his opponent is avoiding the debate which could boost democratic ratings. Universal digital television? A rebate for the new compulsory digital boxes? Discounts for welfare recipients? It is a fact that in tough economic times people anesthetize themselves with entertainment. So how about my latest TV network pitch? Maverick TV. Or better, Automatic Pilot. A weekly or nightly show which will air a different entertainment or pilot every single night. Reality shows, unreality shows…. drama, comedy, live art, eating contests,whatever.

As I was leaving my building today, I ran into a pissed-off woman in an expensive suit who’d been dropped by a taxi on 96th Street, instead of 69th. She was frantically hailing a vehicle and casting racial aspersions on the driver who’d fleeced her of 27 blocks’ worth of extra fare. Maybe, I suggested to her, she got a driver who read from right to left. Or better yet, a dyslexic driver. Her open-mouthed response inspired me to create the first pilot: Dyslexic Taxi Driver. The possibilities are endless. Spinoffs include Dyslexic Candidates, Money Managers and Cooking Shows. Fun.

Next I read an article about renaming streets in New York as memorials. Now that our city budget is cutting major corners, how about commemorating dead celebrity love affairs--- ex-boyfriends? One Tree Hilton. A sapling for every block.

Forget about Fantasy Sports Leagues…how about Fantasy Diagnosis? We’ll go into the hospitals and raise stakes for the doctors who get the right answers. Improve our medical statistics. Pay for health insurance.

How about NickName that Person? John McCain could be Mickey C. And his reverse-sexist sidekick—Robin. Or America’s Biggest Loser, Republican Version? Deal or No Deal, starring Henry Paulson. Wall Street Poker so we can have a glimpse of the way these guys actually operate. Or Exposed—that MTV show, with the investment bankers hooked up to the lie detectors. Judge Judy— Wall Street Version. That one will have to run 24/7. Stupid Politician Tricks...The Simpsons—starring OJ...and for the women, The Witches of East Hampton featuring the bitch-wife of the Wall Street criminal who sits on my board, the one who presses a little remote in the shape of a cellphone and texts her husband his lines. Sitting next to her last night was like plastic surgery without anesthesia.

Not to mention actual Law and Order which could hypothetically round up these financial criminals and recupe the money they stole in excessive bonuses and spending. Unlock their offshore bank accounts and liquidate vacation homes. Donate. I’ll bet we could find a good part of that $700 billion right here in Manhattan. I want to know why you don't see the Bear Stearns CEOs begging for change? They are still in those oversized apartments in my co-op, leaking onto others' ceilings, finding clever ways to fleece their neighbors and fast-track maintenance contributions into pretentious funds and projects while they line their own accountable pockets. Are there no mirrors? No shadows? These guys need to be held down and have a soul sewn onto their body. And pay the price. Ad nauseam.

TV or no TV, it all comes down to justice. At least some of the honest disgusted shareholders in my building raised their fists last night. Come on, Democrats….these financial wizards are running the American co-op into the ground. They are using your sweat and blood to pay for their luxury vacations and golf club memberships. And they are criminals. We need a Kansas-style tornado to lift the house of Democracy up and drop it on the Wicked Witch of economic corruption. It’s our money; don’t fall for another trick. And don’t wait too long and watch too much fantasy TV or you’ll find Maverick Mickey C behind the curtain at the controls of the Great and Terrible US of A.

Mondo Manga

So the word is out. The Bear Stearns fixed income managers—the ones that really cooked the books--- are now at J.P. Morgan. I hope old J.P. has plenty of legroom in his coffin because he’ll be spinning like a top. But I suppose the sunken BS ship is in such a mess that only the 3-card-Monty masters can re-construct their burned bridges. Creative arson is the only way to cover your tracks sometimes.

And if you want to find true love in this century, you must have a reality show. My neighbor’s 15-year old daughter-- honor roll, debating champion— is a fan of the Bret Michaels girl-circus. It is hard to imagine how far one must travel to find such a variety of female specimen missing an essential part of their brain. Also, in a show on which the ever-sincere and oh-so-talentless Poison singer claims to be looking for love, the biggest bunch of reality-show rejects and brainless boob-heads should have at least gone through that MTV liar show screening. Not a single one would have made the first cut. But does Bret care that they misrepresent their age, possible marital status, even sexual preference? One of them was recently having sex with the other most repulsive member of his band and an obvious rival. But she definitely has the biggest boobs, so all is forgiven. Even if they are as fake as her collagen-enhanced lips. Apparently rock of love can be a fake painted pet-rock. And there’s always season 3. Apparently America likes liars and fakes.

Which brings me to the art market and our big spring Brooklyn Museum Murikami extravaganza, complete with factory-produced paintings called ‘a la Warhol’. Poor old Andy. Not only has the art world missed the point, but there IS no point. At least Andy’s subject matter was satire—the symbols of our culture—the pop icons, the advertisements, the deification of the mundane. Now it is the cartooning of the cartoon. A store of hideous hijacked designer accessories. Marc Jacobs, you certainly have sold out from the rockin' boy-designer I met way back. And there is a whole Sistine-Chapel-style staff of artisans to blow up the already blown. Balloon creatures and dolls. What next? The new World Trade Center made of lego? Edible Tiffany? Blow-up dolls standing in for Starbucks girls, giving out your money at bank windows? Naked-geisha holograms giving you a lap dance at Teriyaki Boy? When will it end?

I’m having a sugar rush just browsing the Arts section of the NY Times. Is there anyone who is jonesing for good-old-reality? Is there any funk left in New York City? Any square block that hasn’t been face-lifted, whitewashed, commercialized, graffiti-proofed? Help! Andy!

And on the homefront, in my 21st-century version of a Manhattan home, the Bear Stearns bandits have pulled a Bush-style Florida election stunt and gained a majority of my co-op board. Which means they will bankrupt the building until it is ripe for a corporate takeover and conversion into a mini-mall. They have already engineered a forged lawsuit which will compel all honest tenants to pay these overpaid crooked managers’ maintenance for 10 years with 2/3 of our paycheck. Just in case they were going to have to live on last years’ bonus for a while, which is no longer likely. While they had a bit of a small scare, they needed to practice mergers and takeovers on their poor neighbors. They have grown bold, these mama's boys whose greatest challenge has been a college application, Lamaze class before epidurals, and keeping a tough face during Botox injections. Not even a rap on the palm with a stick for what used to warrant a jail sentence. Are you listening, Martha and Sam? And for those of us who can’t afford to move from their home-castle, life is miserable, services are withheld, democracy is miscarried while the corrupt little junta sings and dances and smokes cigars. For those of us who yearn to move, they will reject every buyer until they can take over our cherished homes for half value, just the way they bilked all those American suckers into over-ambitious home-buying. Bigger mortgages, bigger commissions. Isn’t corporate crime fun? They haven’t even missed a paycheck. And they've sued their neighbors for a huge payoff. Clever little emperors.

Where is Eliot Spitzer when we need him? He’s had his vital parts tied…another huge trap he fell into, which stinks to me like corporate behind-the-scenes hocus-pocus in a big way. The biggest stinkers are always the best finger-pointers. Eliot had a big finger, but tiny hands compared to these money managers.

Is there justice? Is there a hell? A real prison? Is there no master of ceremonies to ask ‘Will the real criminals stand up, please, so the rest of us can go back to our homes and go on with the business of rebuilding America, purging the stench of corporate greed, and creating something with our hands and brains?’ Unfortunately the parade-route of the fat naked emperors is lined with worthless flat copies of cartoon characters and devoid of mirrors.

The Bear Stearns Crash Diet

So whatever happened to American justice? Are rich people just worth more, the way the heavier populated states have more delegates? What if delegates were allotted according to the proportion of money generated by each state? Hmmm…..

Seems to me the punishment should somehow fit the crime, that being caught selling a joint to your friend for $2 shouldn’t be equated with selling several thousand kilos via a network. Magnitude. Restoration. Seems to me these Bear Stearns bastards should have to pay, maybe do some prison time, be fined and stripped of their goods in direct proportion to the damage they caused. What kind of example is the Fed setting here? Or is this deal, as Rogers commented, ‘welfare for the rich’? How is it that hundreds of employees have lost their jobs, while the true criminal minds have been airlifted to safety?

My teenage son has been guilty of much rule-breaking at school, has not taken seriously the onus of detention, the threat of suspension. But at the same time, the principal at his high-profile school does not want a negative statistic on her record. He knows this, and continues to cross the line, whereas at the high-school across the river, poor kids are tossed for less than this.

Another parable: the overweight kid who, for his own health, must be forced or encouraged to exercise. But he refuses. So, his overpaid nanny bribes him with a cookie. He does a few jumps and hops, returns to the bench. Another cookie. Ups the ante. Until the whole box—every day— just to get him on his feet. By the third month, no way is he giving up the cookie habit. He’s fatter and fatter…blood sugar rising. Doctor orders ‘cold turkey’. But now, the cookie company will see a downturn in daily sales. So do we secretly cut a deal? What now?

Fat people do not like to have their plate taken away. Alcoholics do not like it when the bartender pours coke in their shotglass. And investment bankers are not willing to give up their excessive cookie money, no matter how many employees and American communities they must ruin to keep their bellies padded.

Have any of you seen this film ’Body of War’? The defense department, Dick Cheney, George Bush and John McCain should be strapped into a straightback unpadded chair and forced to screen this repeatedly. For that matter, now that Prince Harry’s been shipped home, how many boys in these wars gave up seven –figure incomes for the privilege of fighting? How many Bear Stearns sons are fighting in uniform? Why doesn't the Fed show them the money?

A protest was held in the Bear Stearns lobby yesterday. A journalist friend of mine described the demonstrators as ‘poor people’. This pissed me off. I think these Bear Stearns guys should be lined up and made to put their money in a pot. All of it. Then their lines of credit, their stock and gold shares, their overpriced condos. They can’t give back the holidays in the Caribbean, the private school tuition, their wives’ plastic surgery expenses. But they should be held responsible to the extent they profited from their bad behaviour. That word again. Accountability. These guys don’t like giving up their million-cookie ration. Instead they like pointing their finger at Eliot Spitzer and tormenting the tenants of my building and taking advantage of the rules and then burdening us with lawsuits so their kids can have more cookies than all the kids in China and Africa put together, in 10 lifetimes.

At least in the UK the judge shamed Heather Mills for her greed and gall. And Paul McCartney didn’t wheel and deal and steal for his billions. He made something. These bankers make nothing. They borrow and lend and squeeze and then legislate and manipulate, eat all the cookies and sit on the bench with the Feds. They con the rest of us out of our own and refuse to give them back.

I smell the smell of American sewage. I smell the smell of BS. This is a rotten state of affairs. The only hotseats here this month are those of our former and current governor whose middle-aged sex lives seem to sell more papers than the biggest scam of the year.
These guys have made off with all the cookies. And in case the cookie-makers are bankrupted, the Fed and JP Morgan will make sure they have plenty of cake. Brownies.

Want to know where to find the money to quell the housing crisis? From the bastards that caused it in the first place. Let’s play the film in reverse and make them give back all the commissions. But first to the wounded vets and their families. Then to the wounded middle class. And just to show them how justice works? Let the Bear Stearns executives earn minimum wage while they clean up the mess. I’ll sleep better. And while they’re figuring out how to pay for the family’s pizza and coke on an average American salary, they might remember how to do real math.

Women and Children Last

Bianca has mold, the Helmsley has bedbugs, and I’ve got Bear Stearns in the house. Like green slime, these investment banking types have seeped through walls and usurped larger and larger apartments in my building. Surreptitiously, like a growth—they wheeled and dealed, wined and dined the gullible and naïve among us, flipped mortgages until—lo and behold, hocus-pocus three-card Monty—they have a majority, have voted themselves via secret blackberry-driven bloc onto the pivotal seats of the board of this old venerable co-op and now sit there like shiny new Porsches in a used-car lot.

And they are hungry, these boys. They are hungry beyond what is humanly possible to consume in a lifetime. It is hard to imagine what happened or didn’t happen during the adolescence of these people…because where most of us move on to a life and some semblance of maturity, they are stuck in that infantile phase where one cups one’s hand over the testpaper and looks over at the desk beside. Just checking! Or those furtive sidelong locker-room glances. The rolled-towel smack to cover it up. Hmmm…

Good thing we had that nasty Eliot Spitzer scandal to distract us from the version of 3-card Monty played by Wall Street, the Fed, Bear Stearns and JP Morgan who appeared like a fairy godfather to wave their wand over the whole matter. While America downloaded the latest Girls Gone Wild video and rated the Emperor girls alongside their NCAA brackets.

But what really happened? That $2 a share price. Well, seemed like a good deal to me. Apparently only for the bottom half of the totem pole, the meat and potatoes of the firm-- those in operations, salaried workers with pensions who are now unemployed and reeling from having their bear-rug pulled from beneath them. The ‘caviar’ of the firm? The players? The ones who cheat the government by claiming an on-paper salary of $200,000 and receive 7 and 8-figure bonuses even when the billions of dollars is loss? They cut a deal with Uncle JP. Not only were they not punished, but to console the poor humiliated criminals…they received huge bonuses and awards of Morgan stock to seal the deal. In other words, they threw their rank and file under the bus so they wouldn’t miss a single 5-star meal. And of course the stock has risen. God and the Feds smile on JP Morgan.

In the good old days of true corporate spirit, everyone shared. Everyone took a pay cut. How about Bloomberg at the helm of our city ship? He takes nothing from the till. One has the feeling that if his companies and holdings were bleeding out, he wouldn’t be pouring Drano into the holes the way these Bear Stearns executives did. Can you imagine their version of the Titanic? Fuck the women and children! Save the traders. A little submarine equipped with wireless service and sushi and vodka would have appeared to take them to safety. Of course… because they would have been the beneficiaries of the insurance policy, would have sold the ship the insurance in the first place—no backs! Etc., etc. They may even have been filmed by TV cameras contributing to the Titanic memorial fund once safely onshore and dry, with sad TV faces.

Well, at the moment these peg-head crooks are at the wheel of my building, my home. They don’t even know the place— they just got here. They don’t have a home, they have ‘homes’. They trade real estate and sometimes roost there long enough to turn a profit. When they are bored on Saturdays they smoke a cigar together and plan how to take over the building. Like a merger. First they will bankrupt the small shareholders. They will vote in expensive unnecessary improvements and services. A gym. Yes, a gym, because many of the older tenants are handicapped, have had a stroke, and can scarcely make it to the elevator. A yoga room! A play room! They will even hire their architect friends and receive commissions! Pocket money! Don't forget expensive faux-furnishings for the lobby. Oh such fun to run up a bill the old homesteaders won’t be able to pay. Compulsory manicures? No, that’s silly. That was from one of the attractive wives who is on the nouveau decorating committee. Can she tell real wood from fake? Of course not, silly! But they can also cause massive service inconveniences and refuse to compensate. They can flood and drill and crack old walls and install air conditioning vents in windows of the poorer apartment-residents, so eventually, if they are not dead of stress, they will give up and sell their shares for $2. Just like the corporate model!

They say the meek shall inherit the earth. Well, these are the nouveau meek. The old guard has been driven to a sorry state by this corporate bedbuggery. And this building is a corporation…it is illegal for the government to interfere with the ‘will’ of the corporation, no matter how the old majority hands have been bilked and tied and our mouths gagged. How come the Feds come running in to bail out the banks and no city agency will witness the criminal and reprehensible behaviour of these insatiably selfish people? We couldn't even get a crooked inspector to do battle with the slime because they had already been paid to not return our calls.

My old building had a lending library in the laundry room. When there was a strike, we all manned the elevators, bagged up the trash. When our finances were low, the richer of us bought paint and painted. We cooked for one another and shared Christmas cheer. The green thumbs planted the garden. We babysat and borrowed and loaned our children.

Good Friday. I stopped by the Morgan Library tonight…thought about old JP and looked at some of the Books of Hours on display. Thought about all the great old masters he could have bought instead of the Bear Stearns pretenders. I also thought about justice. “JP”, I said, to that great portrait—“these people belong in prison, not on your staff! They are Judases and Enrons. You know what they’re up to! Sam Waksal is a schoolboy by comparison.”

On the way home I gave my change to anyone homeless even though I scarcely have money for bread tonight because of the pretentious hideous faux-furniture for the lobby which no one will sit on. And has anyone noticed the price of eggs these days? Forget about gas and oil—it’s Easter.

The lobby as I enter now looks like a once beautiful woman in drag with garish make-up. You want to leave it behind as quickly as possible. But there is a God. I know it. His son was crucified on this day. Unforgivable. He rose and forgave. On the other hand, I am not a god. But the Bear Stearns 'heroes'? On Easter these people will eat Godiva bunnies. They are praying to St. Bart's. I will be looking at my drilled out bathroom—the one my new neighbors-on-the-board apologised about and promised to fix the next day, and now basically tell me to shove it. I have the status of a share of Bear Stearns stock. I remember my old building…in my bathroom… ‘Andy was hear’ on the wall. I miss him. I miss everything great. Everything real. Even Andy-style real. I hope Andy rose, God.

Does anyone remember several months ago there were bedbugs in Spitzer’s father’s building? Was this an omen? A plant? An ironic parallel to the bugs and wiretaps on his son? Come back, Eliot. Next to these people, even you are a saint.