Reel to Real

Okay.  I confess I watched a few minutes of the Jersey Housewives--- enough to see one of these women whining about her autistic child who, despite all the therapists and housekeepers money can buy, is a bit of a challenge.  So… although she spent umpteen thousands and many weeks of tears getting pregnant in the first place, she now is going to go to California on her own to 'get a break' and have her stomach surgically reduced at the same time.  (I’ve got a mind to give up living… but I think I’ll go shopping instead).  After all, it is all about her. 

On the 106 bus yesterday, people were sighing and trying not to complain about the nearly 5 minutes it took to board and secure the wheelchair of a young black teenager with such severe cerebral palsy, his head and neck have to be strapped against the chair, and a sort of tray is attached to his chest to catch saliva and whatever fluids drip uncontrollably because he cannot close his mouth, and his tongue moves constantly between 3 or 4 irregular rows of teeth, as though he’s trying to say something we cannot understand. I wonder if his Mom whines.  He was alone--- relying on the driver--- unable to get a drink, protect himself from the soaking rain, blow his nose, wipe his eyes,  complain.  He seemed to be smiling, even when 2 boys boarded the bus, stared rudely at his plastic bib, and declared it was ‘disgusting’.  I wanted to kiss him.  But that is pathetic too. 

To think I used to complain about Sex in the City…now this Housewives (with an emphasis on ‘real’ just in case we were wondering) stuff has gone so far back down the ladder of media ‘evolution’—do people really find this entertaining? These prematurely botoxed brainless women with plasterboard mansions and hair extensions screaming like bloody siren-brats? They need to clean latrines for a few weeks.  They need to spend a few days with the boy on the bus.  They need to read a Pearl Buck novel and reevaluate what it is to be a woman. 

It is very confusing, though--- they are on magazine covers and talk shows, they travel among celebrities, they do fashion shoots.  At least Marge Simpson stays in a box.  Apparently in the US, as opposed to the UK, you can buy a crown and be a princess.

Ask Jay-Z--- you can buy yourself a free pass to royalty—a color, changed name, the top of the charts---whatever.  Celebrity Fairy Dust… Remember the couple that crashed the Obama Inaugural Ball?  She managed to crash a reality show and get paid, and now she’s eloped with a rockstar.  Is that a 21^st century fairy-tale or what?  And the princess is probably 50 years old.  Does anyone ever call these people out? Say--- hey, you’re not even really singing! You’re just an impostor!

There is also the celebrity cancer thing.  Michael Douglas--- Angelina—Giuliana…these people make it almost desirable to have cancer.  They are more beautiful, they do not appear to suffer… they get clothing and more invitations, more dinners--- awards, accolades.  Not so for the people on the 106 bus,  a percentage of whom, according to statistics, will be diagnosed, are being treated, are in pain—have earned a crown of thorns. 

And who isn’t an imposter?  A-Rod who hit an unadulterated home-run today?  Lindsay Lohan-clean?  Michelle Obama with her Barbie hair and bangs?  A confessed murderer? After all, do we all not lie about small things, exaggerate?  Amplify our guitars and voices, wear clothing, smile, tolerate?

I attended another Blues Hall of Fame induction.  For me, Blues is what it was.  Who are these people, in 2013, including myself, and what is blues to this new culture besides the soundtrack to Viagra commercials?  There’s a Russian guy who for maybe 35 years has been busking on 23^rd St with a cheap little amp, singing and playing 12-bars.    Sure, he’s improved… but is the blues the music or the circumstances of his life?  He wasn't at the induction. The guy from Canarsie who get on our stage with difficulty, bears scars and holes from heroin abuse and beatings--- plays a harmonica and makes up lyrics that can’t quite find a rhythm?  He seems to have the blues.  He certainly dresses badly and wears a Disabled reduced-fare MTA pass around his neck.  When he sings or raps, I believe him.  He wasn't at the induction either.  How about the kids with the expensive guitars whose Dads diligently paid for lessons and Clapton-camp until after 30 years of diligently covering Muddy and Buddy like top-40, now sit in with their idols---at least the few who are left?  A few of these were there.  On and offstage.  Waiting for their Warholian Blues Moment.  Maybe if Andy had lived he'd have done a portfolio of Great Bluesmen.  It would have made a statement.  I would have trusted his judgment.    

Today I passed my neighborhood Health Food Store.   There is a vintage set of Beatles dolls in the window from the Yellow Submarine era, as a sort of nostalgic and dusty symbol—because this is where John Lennon shopped when he was a New Yorker.  I remember being on line here several times with some annoying asshole who pretended to be John Lennon, flirting and making jokes in his Liverpool accent while I waited to pay for my rice.  I was in my 20’s then, and the store manager suggested that I might not want to be rude to a fellow customer, and I replied…You mean that Beatle impersonator asshole?  And he whispered to me that no, that was the real John Lennon.  The thing is, the guy was annoying and I didn’t believe him.  I think the real John Lennon appreciated me for that.  He stopped making stupid comments and I continued to ignore him.  After all, what was the difference?  If I had a cellphone would I have taken a shot of us and posted it on my facebook page every year on his birthday to commemorate this happy coincidence?  Maybe if it had been George.  And I still don’t have a cellphone in 2013.

There used to be this Rod Stewart look-alike and he’d take people to the Hard Rock Café and they’d pick up the tab.  For all of us.  He’d even protest and they’d insist.  Last month I refused to go see the imposter CBGB’s bathroom that’s been replicated in a venerated Museum.  If this is the CBGB’s bathroom, I reason, how can I trust the Temple of Dendur? 

What was it Dennis Hopper said in ‘River's Edge’?  I’m not crazy; I know it’s a doll.  These people today do not know it’s a doll.  They can’t tell the real from the imposter because the labels have been all mixed up.  Like the last decade’s Real World… the endless versions of ‘Real’ Housewives.  Real housewives were pushing shopping carts today on east 106^th St with clusters of kids and benefit cards.  Real housewives are sitting on their stoops swapping cigarettes and spitting out bad teeth they can’t afford to fix.

Two girls were in my building lobby this afternoon wearing T-shirts that said ‘Anyone But Quinn”.  They were passing out leaflets.  I asked them who they were really for, and they didn’t seem to know, but they were earning $5 an hour and ‘meeting cool people’. 

We hope, eventually, the ‘real’ mayor of New York will step up to the plate.

YANKEE DISINGENUITY

It's been a rough week... Iranian protests, train crash, a building collapsed in Clinton...Farrah Fawcett, whose obituaries were waiting in the can... but who could have predicted she'd be upstaged by Michael Jackson? Quite a shock for all of us who grew up with the 40 year soundtrack of clearly the largest popstar in the world. And talent so astonishing most of us choose to ignore his eccentric behaviours and cannot quite fathom the celebrity-cross Michael had to bear. Not to mention the cult of non-personality the toxic 21st century has brought. Bring it on, bring it on.

My Thriller-buying self could never have imagined the quality of entertainment could have been so diminished by astounding progress in technology. Why just this week I was treated to an episode of 'Prep' where the blankest examples of Manhattan elite children use language like 'I shoulda went' and roomfuls of precociously overgroomed brunettes with identical stylists and hairdressers exchange vapid dialogue and cellphone numbers. No wonder my son is promiscuous. You can scarcely tell these people apart. And who in their right mind would parade their kids into the homes of bored viewers...for what? Money? Aren't these people rich? At a certain point I thought it inappropriate for Princeton to let Brooke Shields matriculate... so what's next...the South Park boys as virtual college Freshmen? My brain hurts.

I actually was asked to comment on the New Jersey Housewives show. Now I was not a Sopranos watcher...never had HBO... but these women are so off-the-charts unwatchable...and what's up with the trashy one inserting herself into the neighborhood? Aren't there people from New Jersey who resent this? Housewives of Newark? Why isn't that ex coke-addict thrown out of her home? She admits to massive debt...does she trade sex for Mastercard points? Who shows up at anyone's family dinner and confronts the table with pathetic stories about their past? Mute comics are more entertaining. Get her out. Nice women and good hardworking mothers have children with disabilities... this moron thinks the world wants to listen to her trash? And obviously these other ladies needed a little drama to spice up their over-indulged day? In my day, women like her got the silent treatment at best.

It seems to me, with everything you can possibly imagine on youtube, television would have to be a little competitive, offer a bit more than violation of privacy as a subject. Are we that pathetically voyeuristic that we need to know about the sex life and living room furniture of illiterate housewives?

And then we have Governor Sanford. How many of those wet-behind-the-ear TV bloggers were reading his emails on air like giggling teenage gossip girls with a hard-on? What do they know about love anyway? Let's crucify someone for having an affair. In the days where men were men and talent was talent, Thomas Jefferson and even JFK didn't have to compromise themselves with email and didn't have tattletale staffs who are too self-involved to keep their mouths shut. Privacy is the new American obsession. The invasion of someone else's, that is... guilty underbaked little souls that we have become. If Jesus showed up he wouldn't even get a passport.

Forget MTV, forget VH1, forget the myriad combinations of bands and employed instrument holders who cannot possibly be in the same industry as a Michael Jackson. Ditto the rappers. No wonder poor Michael was in pain.

But tonight... my non-achievement balls-to-the-wall award of the month, goes to either the YES network for broadcasting it, or that ridiculous Bernie Williams who didn't get enough camera-time or obscene bankable cash as an overpaid Yankee, and now has to torment us with his pathetic version of music. As though the world doesn't have enough smooth bad jazz to make Miles Davis spin forever. I actually know the guitarist in his band who is a decent musician and had plenty of ass in his time, and must be putting 17 handicapped kids through college to have lowered himself to this kind of celebrity guitar-neck sucking. Okay, so he looks a litle sheepish, giving Bernie the old-- 'yeah, you go...' face...trying to console himself with the presence of other professionals on the same stage, humiliating themselves forever, for money. As for me, I'll eat stale cake-crumbs. The sight of old Bernie, who looks about as natural with a guitar as Oprah... switch-hitting one expensive axe after the other, spilling out pre-packaged arpeggios and cliches with subtle non-musicality and that Hendrixesque ecstasy-face he must have studied in the mirror forever. Let some dysfunctional musical type who actually has a vision and no fielding ability have just a little corner of the market, okay Bernie? Go back into the cereal box that doesn't even want your face on it anymore because you belong to the has-been. Go to a third-world country and build houses. Play golf. Did Michael Jordan pollute our ears and screens with his saxophone? He got himself a big desk and sits behind it. Get off the screen and off the stage. Or if you really want to play guitar, try auditioning for the Puerto Rican Day parade as Pedro Garcia. See how far you get. Don't usurp the name of a former major-league ball player. Open a restaurant like those other guys. A strip club. Coach the Mets. God knows they could use it. But please, give the people with ears a break. Donate those overpriced instruments to the Music-in Schools program. Let someone with talent have a chance. Or better yet, go home and hit yourself in the head with a bat. It kind of looks like a baseball so maybe someone else will do it for you. In language you can understand, if Michael Jackson is Babe Ruth, you are selling uncooked hotdogs at a rained-out Little League game. And fortunately or unfortunately, neither will be able to give you his professional opinion.

I don't care what they will say about you, Michael. Maybe you are better off out of this toxic world where privacy seems to have gone the way of talent. You are and were and ever will be among the Kings.