Stylin' with Bruno Schultz

Stylin’ with Bruno Schultz

“Now, you have to realize there was no hip hop then, my children. It was long before Africa Bambatta and the other peeps from the Bronx River Houses started to have parties with DJs and MCs. There was rap, but there wasn’t hip-hop. But I don’t want you to think that there was no stylin’ going on. Because there was and it was me making the whole party hearty. Yeah, I ran my posse just like Easy-E ran his in Compton.

Now, a lot of you have seen that Charlie Ahearn movie, “Wild Style,” but I’m here to tell you that before there was “Wild Style,” there was Bruno Schultz-before-the-Nazis style. I was a bad ass motherfucker back then in the 30s before the brothers were laying down beats and talking all that trash over them. My shit hit harder than an army tank. When I spat out my testimony, the verses were so sharp they shredded the mikes.  

Called our asses, the NBH crew. Stands for Natural Born Hebrews. That era I came up in got me gone, nwa’ mean? Me an’ my homies Sic ‘Em, 4 Play and Pretty Ricky, we were crunk party animals and all the civilians and the hustlers had to respect our grind. When we dropped a mixtape, it changed the game. Wasn’t the same, old bullshit about the kind of rims niggers had on their BMWs in ‘36. We pushed it over the top, but kept it street. 

Wouldn’t be no Sean John line if it hadn’t been for me and my ghetto stylin’ brothers from them Sbreazin slums. You modern day brothers think you representing, you should have seen us between the Wars. We used to have them foxes eating out of our hands and sucking on whatever else we put out at them. Yeah, we was hauling in the shorties like they were so many mountains of fish piling up in our pre-hip hop nets, my brothers. We were the kikes that controlled the mikes and we kept it tril. Them little ghetto girls and even them foxes spoke nothing but German, liked to get down with us. We’d take those high-styling German-only bitches back to the crib and before long they’d be moaning and shouting in time to us thumping them in the prettiest Yiddish gefelt you ever heard down South, down shetlel way. I’m telling you now, we weren’t jiving, we was stylin’. 

That’s what it was like down Central Europe way when we was jamming in the wayback and that Nazi menace looked like as much of a threat to us as Barry Manilow was to the early rappers, the real Wild Style era brothers. 

But I can’t front. You know most of the brothers and sisters perished and there aren’t too many of us left who know the beats and remember the abuse we used to take from our people, never mind the gentiles, for our wide-ass trousers and what they called our filthy lyrics. We put out some dope discs like “We So Hood,” and “Why God Love Da Jews (da goyim annoy him)” and other heavy shit than changed the rap game. 

Everybody had a problem with our bling and our gold-capped teeth. Only thing kept us going was the music. Didn’t have no weed, didn’t have no uppers or downers. All we had was that Czech beer, came in steins make your forties look like shorties. No, if you want to get the straight take on those early days of rap, those jamming’ 30s, it’s Bruno Schultz who invented that thug thing.

You should have seen it when my cd “Street of Crocadildos” came out. That was a happening record and it soared up the charts like it had a butt rocket under it. We couldn’t find a big enough place to play anywhere near the Tikkun Olam Houses so we rented out a club across the river in Breslau and put on a show there. We wanted to give something back to the homies before we went out on a tour took us from Kiev to Trieste in 36 days and 35 nights.

I ain’t saying we didn’t have our beefs and our issues. We was always arguing about whether to include some German lyrics in our rhymes, which were nearly always in Yiddish, the language of the ghetto. Some of the peeps in my crew said it would broaden our audience, and I guess it might have, but it would have made us less Jewish. I wanted to keep it real. Who knows maybe German rhyming would have got us tours that took us out of Europe altogether? We might have been playing South America or someplace when the shit hit the fan here in Poland. Maybe we would have been able to sit out the War on some beach in Rio. I dunno, people that hated ghetto rap might have gone after our asses there too. 

But I couldn’t see that then. And that was bad, because I was the visionary of our crew. Not that that was saying much, but it was me who had the idea of hooking up with the heavy metal acts and getting us spread out a bit more in the media. Helped out their lame ass acts too, like Aerosmith and Rush and all those hair bands, got a second taste of life thanks to the formula that I came up with when I was pushing us rhymers to work with their honky asses. 

And then to hear how they tell it, its like these dudes never heard of a rapper getting his face on a major magazine cover before the 80s. But that’s just more jive, I was on the cover of Vogue and Rolling Stone about 6 times between 1932 and 1935. I even did the Time and Newsweek covers the same week in 1934. So you don’t have to tell me that it’s harder to break through to the mainstream media now and that back in our day it was easy. 

I ain’t buying that shit. If there’d been TV back then, instead of just WJEW, ghetto radio, I’d have my own line of clothes now and would’ve been bigger that this faggot Sean John Puffy Combs Diddy cause I’m Bruno Schultz and it’s my flow you must know.”

Watching TV at Eric Bogosian’s House –

Watching TV at Eric Bogosian’s House – 

The big-screen TV the Bogosians got over a year ago now wasn’t my idea, let me make that clear from the git-go. I was perfectly happy with the old TV. Sure, watching TV together is a big part of my relationship with Eric, his wife, Jo Bonney, you know, the theatre director, and his boys, whatever their names are, but it wasn’t me that was pushing for the upgrade. 

The new TV does have a much clearer image and it made it easier for me to see, but if anyone had asked me, I’d just have soon have gotten an upgrade in the snacks or the beer I see them having. Heineken is OK, but for a TV star, performer, writer type of guy like Eric, would it be asking too much to see some Dinkel Acker or some other classy and non-conglomerate produced beer around the living room?

Then there’s choice of programming. I remember watching the 2006 U.S. tennis Open final with some of the Bogosians, must have been Federer against Nadal, and it was pleasant enough. It’s hard to say who the tennis fan in the family is, but I enjoyed the simulcast aspect of it because I am a hard-core tennis fan and I had it on at home at the same time I was watching it on the Bogosian’s screen. So not only do the refreshments lag, at least I think they do, it’s hard to be sure, when have they ever offered me any, but for all the years I’ve watched TV with the Bogosians, have they ever once asked me what I wanted to watch? No, they haven’t.

I don’t know, maybe they think I’m supposed to kick in for their cable bill or something. I never said I wouldn’t. What am I supposed to do, guesstimate my share of it? I’ve never discouraged anyone in that family from asking me for anything so I don’t know why they have to clam up about whether they want me to pay for some of what we’re watching together. I’m not saying I’d spring for the Golf Channel or any of those other extra, pay per view things that maybe some other celebrity families might go for.  But basic service and yeah, HBO, I’d consider a request if they had enough manners to ask. I mean, this is only if they care. You can’t tell what people are thinking. If it’s not bugging them, then let’s just leave it alone. I’m happy with the current arrangement except for, you know, the snacks and nobody ever asking me what I want to watch.

It’s true I’m not, in a literal sense, there. But there’s nothing keeping them from phoning or emailing me and asking me about what we should watch. Shit, they could even use hand signals, I’m only right across Leonard Street from them. It’s not like I craning my head out of my apartment or using a telescope or something to watch their TV, big deal, now it’s a giganto screen plasma whatever that is, way from far off in another neighborhood.

You’d think they might take the trouble to reach out and consult me on some aspect of our shared activity. It’s not like Leonard Street is even that wide. 

Another thing that bugs me, though, is that if our older TV and basic Time Warner set-up is OK for me and my wife and my daughter, I don’t see why the Bogosians have to get up on their high horse and never watch TV with us.

As far as I can tell, they never look out their window to try and watch TV at my house. I swung the set around years ago so they could see if from their place at 100 Hudson Street. Sure, it’s just a 26-inch, old-fashioned kind of Sony set, but we have cable, maybe just as many channels as the Bogosians do. But they never try to watch TV at our house not even in the months when we have the free Cinemax or HBO. 

It’s not that I want to break up our TV-watching relationship because it’s really at the core of what I do with the Bogosians. Really, outside of watching their TV together, it’s almost like we don’t know each other, for all the other things, that is, none, which we do together. All I’m asking for is a little give and take. 

Philip Roth, Daphne Merkin and Me : What I Learned in Memoir Writing Class at the 92nd St.

Philip Roth, Daphne Merkin and Me : 

What I Learned in Memoir Writing Class at the 92^nd St. 

These are some of the things I learned last March and April when I was a student in Daphne Merkin’s class at New York’s 92^nd St. Y.

Merkin said “Philip Roth is no longer a good writer,” and “Most men are incapable of emotional intimacy.”

Grace Paley got off easier. “I have mixed feelings about Grace Paley,” while poet Mark Strand got a left- handed compliment. Merkin said he was a “dull poet, but a handsome man.” She didn’t temporize about Seymour Hersh. “One of my least favorite journalists.”

Merkin, who gained notoriety for her 1996 New Yorker essay about the pleasures of getting spanked, has taught the memoir writing class at the 92^nd St. Y for several years. She is the author of a novel, a collection of essays and frequently writes for the New York Times magazine, where she is a contributing editor. She also writes for the New Yorker, Slate and the Bergdorf Goodman catalogue.

 If the last outlet seems out of place in the list, Merkin thinks so too. 

“A friend told me the Bergdorf Goodman catalogue was below me,” Merkin excitedly told our class. Merkin said she’d changed a lot of details in her story for the  catalogue story, which is about the death of the dinner party, so that the person she was talking about wouldn’t recognize herself in the piece. “I didn’t think she would read it, but maybe her mother would.”

Merkin’s memoir writing course, “Through a Writerly Eye,” met six times in March and April from 6:30 to 8:30 on Thursday nights. It is one of the 92 St. Y’s “master” classes, which means that students must qualify for admission by submitting manuscripts, which are presumably read by the instructor.  At $375 for the 12- hour class, each of us paid about $30 an hour to be instructed by Merkin. There were 12 students, three men and nine women. 

The following observations grow out of my attendance at five of the six class sessions. All quotes are from Merkin unless otherwise identified.

Taking Merkin’s class was like being allowed to look in on a gruesome scientific experiment in which the instructor’s ego, freed from any of the customary restraints of a superego or some controlling administration, was free to thrash around the room. Naomi Campbell or any other free-to-act-out diva would be one comparison, but it was a class and we were paying for it.

It is doubtful that Merkin’s approach to teaching, blending a logorrheic stream of name-dropping and references to her career, her likes and dislikes, and  her travel plans with what can be at best described as a casual approach to things like showing up on time would play for long at most colleges. If we weren’t treated to at least one name-drop or self-referential aside every 15 minutes, it was rare. Usually, they flew fast and furiously.

Nor would her laissez-faire approach to scheduling the consideration of student work fly in other settings. After all, one basic tenet of most writing classes is that student work is read and commented on by the instructor and the students. Thus, if one person gets twenty minutes of class time and another, two hours, there is a problem. Merkin couldn’t be bothered to allocate class time equally. Note: You don’t want to be the last one to go on the last night of a Merkin class. That was the woman who got twenty minutes. 

“I don’t wear a watch.”

But the 92^nd St. “Y” isn’t a college. Nor are all its classes like Merkin’s. April Reynolds’ advanced fiction workshop was sublime.

It’s OK to hold strong opinions. It was the self-absorption that was off-putting, the “as I said to my friend  Kathryn Harrison,” or “ Roy Blount  whom I sat next to at a dinner last night,” combined with the blatant lack of interest in teaching the class that gives a memorist of Merkin as instructor such rich material. 

 Merkin let us know that her important social interactions were elsewhere.

“I just spoke on a panel on Virginia Wolf with Peter Gay.”

“Brian Grazer, a director I know . . .” Actually, Wikipedia said he is a producer.

Merkin had trouble remembering student’s names and couldn’t recall who had presented their work and who hadn’t.  

But one student said, as the class complained about Merkin’s late arrivals and lack of focus, that it’s always like this when you take a class with a “star.” She said film class at NYU with Martin Scorsese had been similar.

The Fifth class

Our second to last class was the best, or worst, example of Merkin’s approach. On Monday, emails were sent out notifying students that Thursday’s class was cancelled. On Thursday morning, emails were sent out saying it was on. I wasn’t confused because I didn’t get any of the emails. 

In any event, most of us showed up. By now, we knew the one sure thing was that Merkin would not arrive for the class on time. To her credit, Merkin never missed a class this year. A former student in this same 92^nd St memoir class told me that she just didn’t show up for classes that year.  So even as I paint this picture of Merkin as a dysfunctional, uncaring, self-absorbed instructor, I have to say she didn’t blow off the class altogether this year.

At 6:45, Merkin’s assistant Lila arrived. She told us that Merkin missed her plane in London and was running late. But she was here in New York and was at her apartment reading the second of the two student  manuscripts we were to consider.

Lila told us Merkin said she’d be there in 15 minutes, but added that meant at least a half-hour in Merkin time. She had instructions to read us an essay of Merkin’s from a collection called “The Reading Room” to occupy us.

But while most of the class members rarely objected to Merkin’s approach, this was a little much. The woman whose memoir was getting a quick read from Merkin said we should reschedule the class. The other student whose turn it was agreed with her. 

In light of this rebellion, Lila called Merkin, moving into the hallway for privacy. They talked for about ten minutes. Lila returned  to the classroom to say that Merkin was alright with cancelling, but if we did that, there wouldn’t be any rescheduling because she was going to Israel for Passover. That would exclude what would have been the seventh week of the class. Merkin was too tightly scheduled to squeeze in a make-up session any time after that. 

That the chance of escaping from teaching one of the classes appealed to Merkin wasn’t a big surprise since she had said it be great if she could somehow get out of the last class during an earlier session. Lila’s  news left the two writers undecided about what the best course of action would be. The rest of us were confused about what to do also. 

At this point, the student who presented the memoir that among other bits contained some Ariana Huffington stories said we should just go through with it tonight. She might have had a point, but since the luck of Merkin’s chaotic approach to scheduling had given her nearly two hours of Merkin’s and our time in a previous class, I thought she should leave the decision up to the two writers whose night it was. 

Minutes later the unlucky two whose turn it was that night caved. They asked Lila to tell Merkin we’d have the class that night. 

At 7:30, Merkin arrived, made an apology and was about to start the class. But first, she told Lila to call an editor again and find out whether a reference in a story of hers he was working on had been cleared up. At that, Lila, said, “Are you kidding?” Presumably she meant that at 7:30, the guy wouldn’t be in the office or maybe it was the thirteenth time she’d been asked to contact him. 

Merkin then joined the ongoing discussion of the first memoir we were looking at. She stayed until 9:10 that night, so while we didn’t get the two hours we paid for, we got more than one. Incidentally, the writer whose initial impulse was to reschedule got Merkin’s and our attention from 8:30 to 9:10. Would she have done better another night? Hard to say.

One mystery about the class is whether Merkin actually read our submissions in the application stage. As I mentioned, the deal with these 92^nd St. Y Master classes was that getting into the class was a selective process. Presumably, the teacher picked the twelve best memoirs for the class. I don’t know whether Merkin read our manuscripts, skimmed them or how she selected us.

Merkin often had little recall of student work when as a class we reviewed stories that the writer said were either the same or a reworked version of their application piece. The former Merkin student who told me about Merkin’s no-shows the year she was in the class doubted that Merkin would take the time to read the submissions. She said that when she took the class, a few years ago, it wasn’t a Master Class. Given her exposure to Merkin’s teaching methods, she doubted that Merkin changed her approach when it became a “competitive entry” class. 

If the class was less of a meritocracy that it was supposed to be, it would explain Merkin’s concentration on things that might have been taken for granted in an advanced class. More than once, Merkin went on at great length about M dashes, information we could have easily gotten from a style book. She also pointed out the linkage between reading and writing and said we should read a lot. 

It wasn’t just me who felt like Merkin’s commitment to teaching wasn’t all-engaging. On the train ride home from a class, I suggested to a fellow classmate that we should invite Merkin out for a drink after the last class. This writer, a bit quicker than me in picking up on the Merkin style, said, “Oh, I don’t think that will happen. I think that would be a nightmare for Daphne.” I came to see how right he was. 

With The Charming Young Woman From Rights and Permissions

With The Charming Young Woman From Rights and Permissions

The young woman said she worked in rights and permissions at Penguin. We were sitting on a bench last Thursday night across Prince Street from the former McNally-Robinson bookstore watching the line of people waiting to get in.

What, was there a new Harry Potter out, a line of people nearly clamoring to be let into a bookstore? Was Salman Rushdie or Philip Roth making a surprise appearance?

Not exactly, but there was literary star power on the block just up from Soho’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It must be awfully confusing for visitors that there even is a second St. Patrick’s, but the hubbub was for the name change party at the bookstore. For dull corporate reasons,  McNally Robinson was to become McNally Jackson. 

Before chatting with the charming young woman from rights and permissions, I’d waltzed up to the bookstore’s door expecting the usual McNally reading scene like the one I’d attended the night before. Usually there is nobody with a clipboard at the door. No sign on the door saying the store is closed for a private event.

But on Thursday night, the woman with the clipboard said it was a limited attendance event. You were supposed to have RSVP’ed, but still, she said, they didn’t want to keep anyone out. She said I could get in line and take my chances.

Just as our conversation was ending, a black-haired, guy with rosy checks came up to the clipboard lady and said, “I’m Nathan.”

She paused for a moment, looked at the list and let him in. I said, “that was Nathan Englander, right.” She said it was.  I said, “Oh, you should let me in, just cause I can guess names like that.” It really was just a lucky guess because I didn’t know what the author of “The Ministry of Special Cases”  looked like, nor was he among the advertised writers in the event’s publicity.

I crossed the street and sat down on the bench in front of a boutique. That was when I started to talk to the charming young woman from rights and permissions. 

I said I’d never seen a McNally Whatever reading so mobbed.

She said she didn’t think it was a reading, just a party to celebrate the name change. I asked her if she was a writer. She hesitated and said, she didn’t think so. I figured the hesitation said a lot so I tried to tell her that old joke about how if you want to write and you work in publishing, it’s like wanting to sleep with women and becoming a gynecologist. But I was worried about sounding like a perv and messed up the story. 

She said that a lot to times people ask for rights and permissions when they don’t need to. She also told me that e-books’ day was much closer than I thought. 

Then she said, “Excuse me,” and made a cellphone call to try to find the people she was supposed to meet up with to go to the non-reading. It was good she was polite enough to say “Excuse me.” 

We talked a while longer. I told her the story about the Mary McCarthy memorial. There was no way that story was going to make me seem like a perv. The hall was packed and I was among a few late arrivals the organizers were trying to squeeze in. There were about ten of us, and it sounded like there were only two or three seats left. Then Susan Sontag arrived, and, in effect, cut the line. 

But it was OK with me, after all, she was Susan Sontag. For that matter, though not so visually easy to identify, Englander is Englander. If I’d gotten right in, I wouldn’t have had such nice chat with the charming young woman from rights and permissions. Wouldn’t have learned that sometimes, people ask for rights and permissions, when they don’t really have to. Apparently, Penguin doesn’t have a goon squad to chase you down, if you don’t ask. 

The charming young woman from rights and permissions stood up and said she had to try and find the people she was supposed to meet. I’d said that since it wasn’t a reading, and it was crowded, I probably wasn’t going to go, even if I could get in. She said, “Well, have a good night, whatever you end up doing.”

 I said, “Oh, Ok, who knows, I’ll probably spill a glass of wine on you later on.”

 

A few minutes after she left, I got on the end of the line of people waiting to get in. The guy in front of me said that even though it might not be a reading, there was going to be some cool things. After waiting for about five minutes, I unlocked my bike and rode home. 

Lower Manhattan Man, Readings Enthusiast, Begins Final Training Phase For PEN Conference –

Lower Manhattan Man, Readings Enthusiast, Begins Final Training Phase For PEN Conference –

New York, New York ( 17 April 2009) – Brent Shearer, 57, the Lower Manhattan resident who has gained notoriety as a literary gadfly, held a press conference at Soho’s McNally Robinson bookstore in response to media requests for an update on his training regimen in preparation for the PEN conference.

“I’m tapering off on my time actually listening to readers even though I have continued to adhere to my grueling schedule of going to readings in these last few weeks before the conference. I think this is the best approach because this way I don’t lose my rhythm of getting to the events on time. 

“The point is that by not listening to the readings while I’m there, but still going to them, I think I have achieved pretty much the literary equivalent of the lift that “blood doping” gives runners. I expect to be able to pay better attention to readers at the conference because I’ve spent the last three weeks not listening to writers who have read their works at local venues such as the KGB bar or the Housing Works Café, not to mention our hosts this afternoon.”

Shearer also addressed other concerns raised by the press and the public in the run-up to “Evolution, Revolution,” the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, starting in New York on April 27.

Shearer, the author of the best-selling memoir, “In the Front Row, On the Dole,” the story of a man who lost his job and started his now-legendary going-to-readings project, which  resulted in first place finishes in the PEN competition the last two years, also said, “The new testing rules don’t scare me. I’ve never used any banned substances in my preparation for the PEN conference. Anyone who wants my urine or tissue samples is welcome to them.”

While reluctant to exactly spell out how he manages to attend so many readings, while piling up  the highest per reading scores in the history of the PEN conference. Shearer did say the following in response to questions about whether he was changing anything this year in his going to readings technique.

“A lot of times the margin of victory comes down to how well you can coordinate your use of the city’s mass transit system to hit as many readings as possible to pile up points. Cabs have some utility but if there’s a lot of traffic, forget it. A bike would be good, but I’m scared to ride in heavy traffic so it limits my use of this mode of transport. 

“Being from New Jersey is actually an advantage because in addition to having to know the city’s transit structure as well as natives, I also bring to the table my knowledge of the PATH system. It will surprise people, but often the best way to get from one PEN event to another, say if it’s a question of getting from say “Death in Spring”and “The Time of Doves” at the Cuny Graduate Center, near Herald Sq to “A Thousand Deaths Plus One”  at the New School, NYU or anywhere else in the West Village, is on the PATH.

Shearer also touched on what has been called his “sharp-elbowed” approach to getting the most “mike time” during the questions and answers period that follows many PEN readings. “It’s hard to do well in the PEN competition if you don’t get the bonus points awarded to frequent questioners. They provide a cushion to compensate for the inevitable screw-ups when you get held up on a train or stuck in traffic in a cab so if that means resorting to techniques like unplugging the mike on the other side of the auditorium so I can squeeze in a second question, well, you might have noticed there’s a big gap between first and second place prize money.”

Shearer responded to criticism of his practice at last year’s event of sitting in the “empty” chair customarily placed on the stage at PEN events to draw attention to imprisoned writers. “The symbolic impact of these damm chairs occurs only at the start of the reading when the moderator makes the same canned speech noting the their significance. Once the reading starts, it should be every man for himself. Those on-stage stairs allow the readings competitor the best access to panelists during the questions and answers session and often the quickest egress from venue. I’m sure the imprisoned writers, once they get mentioned, could care less who sits in their chairs during the readings.”

Shearer also said the controversy about professional audience members accepting “guarantees” to attend particular authors’ readings was, in his mind, a non-issue. “I feel as much as anyone that it isn’t an official reading if I’m not there. But these rumors of appearance fees for leading competitors are easily dismissed. If you are tying to win the whole event, you can’t let your schedule be affected by the kind of small change payments that we are rumored to be receiving.”

In response to a reporter's question, Shearer reacted to criticism that the conference’s competition should not allow competitors to merely skip, as Shearer does, events which are wholly or partially conducted in languages other than English. 

“To make this point is more evidence of the hypocrisy of the event’s organizers. I don’t see them scheduling any non-English events at any of the main venues with the best-known writers. They avoid this because they want people to come, want to sell tickets. It’s obvious that the few, relatively, paid events help subsidize the majority of the events which are free and open to the public." 

"When the organizers schedule Salman Rushdie and an otherwise all Filipino slate of authors presenting their work in Tagalog, then they can talk about penalizing competitors who attend only English events," he said.

“Wal-Mart Mulls “Gitmo Blues” Deal”

“Wal-Mart Mulls “Gitmo Blues” Deal” 

“Veteran rockers AC/DC are set to become the next major band to sell a new album only through Wal-Mart stores . . .” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2008. --

Dear Wal-Mart Executive:

I am writing on behalf of the artists and reportoire department of the Al Agaba Martyrs Brigade. We would like to offer Wal-Mart the opportunity to be the exclusive distributor of the recently recorded “Gitmo Blues” sessions, the first compilation of rock tunes recorded by the brothers in confinement in  secret CIA prisons in Poland and elsewhere. These tracks have been remastered with additional vocal backing at the Guantanamo detention facility studios. The tunes range from soft rock in the style of the infidel James Taylor to punk rock as the imprisoned artists/warriors of God kick out the jams on their number “I want to martyred,” which closely follows the tune of the Ramones “I Want to be Sedated.” 

While a print version of the lyrics rarely does a song justice, the fairly androgynous, for us, lead singer belts out, “Take over the airport, Take over the plane, I want to be a martyr.”

Another song uses the Carole King hit, “Chains,” with the jihadi words, “chains, chains, the crusaders got us locked up in chains, and they ain’t the kind the brothers can flee.”

We at the AA Martyrs Brigade believe that revenues from the distribution of the “Gitmo Blues Sessions” plus a percentage of ancillary revenue streams from associated products will dwarf even the most optimistic projected earnings from Wal-Mart’s first generation of exclusive distribution deals with washed up, infidel acts like the Eagles, AC/DC and Journey.

We will be pleased to set up the appropriate shell companies to assist in the repatriation of our earnings from this partnership to our system of safehouse vaults and caves in the Northwest Territory, i.e., in the language of the rough version of a contract we have included in this fax, “the lawless border regions.”

In light of the fact that the brother/ artists will be executed, indeed, have long been seeking martyerdom via execution, at the hands of the Zionist and their allies, touring in support of the CD will not be an option. 

However, as the crusader dogs are likely to kill the brothers one at a time, we see each execution as a publicity point that should drive sales of the CD. Irrespective of whether we make a deal with Wal-Mart or another retailer, we don’t plan to waste  the opportunity of using our martyrs’ deaths as a  marketing opportunity as other groups have, most notably in the absence of any commercial activity linked to the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands and others in the 80s. 

We would like to emphasize that, unlike other deals in the industry, when we say “exclusive,” we mean just that. There will be no, to the extent one can call the crusader legal system viable, “legal” or “illegal” downloads of this material either on Itunes or on services such as Frostwire or Limewire. If we uncover evidence of bit torrent banditry, rest assured that our sleeper cells will strike mercilessly in a manner that will make the Record Industry Association of America’s efforts to interdict illegal downloading look like the empty threats that have long emerged from infidel dog crusader organizations with the exception, of course, of quality retail outlets such as Wal-Mart and Target. 

Another point of agreement between our artists, our recording company executives acting as their representatives and, we presume,Wal-Mart management is the belief  that lyrics must not contain any dirty words that might influence young listeners or offend conservative customers. 

Yes, some of the tracks espouse violence in the waging of global jihad, but you may rest assured that there will no suggestive language that relates to heterosexual eroticism. The only mention of gay unions is the brothers’ condemnaotry, harshly satirical and rocking version of “I knew the bride when he used to rock and roll.” 

We look forward to meeting with you to discuss this mutually beneficial project at earliest convenience. Inshallah khayr to you and yours in Bentonsville. 

The BDM Guide to Locking Bikes on New York City Streets

The BDM Guide to Locking Bikes on New York City Streets

(BDM or Bund Deutscher MŠdel  was the Hitler youth organization for young girls.)

Why Some Lazy People’s Bikes Get Stolen, But Not Mine

By Heike von Schuptfundbocher 

I don’t blame the city’s bike thieves. I blame bike riders who make it easy for them by not locking their bikes securely. This is the same as women who have babies with many men and then expect the government to support them. I do not understand this behavior.

In my eight years of bike riding and locking up my bike on the streets of New York, I have never had a bike stolen. I have established this record because I take the extra time to secure my bike thoroughly. If other riders get their bikes stolen, I must say it is their fault if they do not buy the proper equipment and take the time to fasten their bikes securely. 

It is my strong belief that locking up bikes on the streets of New York should be regulated. I have a dramaturgy license and a sailing license issued by the state of  Bavaria. I think New York City should issue a bike locking license. Until the bike riders of New York achieve this certification, they should not be allowed to lock their bikes on the streets. Frank’s Bike Shop and other retail bike shops should not be allowed to sell locks, Krptonite or other brands, without the purchaser presenting his or her bike-locking license.

Nein, one should not be allowed to lock up his bike on the streets of the city unless he has passed a combination of tests that show he can perform the task properly and efficiently. The test would include a written part and a hands-on section. The written part would make sure the applicant knew things like pointing the lock face down to make access to it harder and the necessity of leaving as little slack as possible in the alignment of chains so thieves have difficulty getting any leverage. The hands-on section would consist of the applicant being given a strange lock and bike and a choice of a few signs, trees, railings and bike racks to lock the trial bike to. The applicant for a bike locking license thus would have to show that he can lock a bike securely in some of the most common street settings.

If there are bike riders who don’t want to take the courses needed to pass the locking certification test, they should still be allowed to ride in the city. But they must keep their bikes at home or in a storage space that is secure. Or if they are locking them, they must be locked indoors somewhere where the lock is just a back-up, and not the primary defense. 

The Only Correct Way to Lock Up a Bike in New York City

First,  I locate the street sign, bike rack or other immovable object that I will lock my bike to. The next thing I do is to use a three-quarter inch chain wrapped around the front of my bike’s frame and the front wheel. This immobilizes the front wheel and ensures that the quick- release hub on the wheel stays closed. It means bike theives can’t get the wheel alone and they can’t get the frame without the wheel. Quick-release front wheels are an obvious vulnerability and should not be overlooked as New York City bikers plan the steps they will take to securely lock their bikes. 

Next I use a U-shaped rigid metal lock and loop it through the back wheel and the stem, that is, the part of the bike that holds up the seat. This is a different kind of lock, equally sturdy, and I figure a thief must have two sets of tools to defeat both of these locks if they want to get the whole bike. 

But sometimes the thieves just go after a wheel. I’m proud to say I’ve also never lost a wheel. Maybe it’s because I’m lucky, maybe it’s because I screw washers down tightly on the axle, which makes it hard to get the nut to turn around. Of course, you have to turn the nut around to get the wheel off. I have those washers on so tight that when they have to take the wheel off at Frank’s Bike Shop to work on it, it gives them a hard time. Of this, I am proud.

I have also never in my entire life smoked marijuana. I am proud to say this too. We, the Huns, have discipline. And I think, you need to have discipline. That’s why it’s so important to work hard. Laziness is a terrible vice. I don’t see anything good about the 1960s. Discipline was lax then. The 1960s were like not taking the time and energy to lock your bike securely and then expecting sympathy when it is stolen. Whom do you have to blame when it is stolen and you’ve done a slipshod job of locking it? Society? The government? That is my view of the 1960s and of Italy too.

People who work in critical care at Mt. Sinai and many other people who hold advanced degrees especially if they are from prestigious schools, are almost 100 percent likely to make the investment in time and equipment to lock up their bikes securely on the streets of New York City. Ja, I have found this to be true.

For example, I admire James Wolfowitz, the former president of the World Bank. He was ousted for the way he handled having an affair with a subordinate. I don’t know how fair that was. He was the head of an important international organization. Any affair he’d have at work would have to be with a subordinate. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so hard on successful men. I’m sure he works very hard and that is important to me. We can’t all be Italian, nor should we be. I’m sure James Wolfowitz, even if he was wrong about the weapons of mass destruction, would take the time to lock his bike securely if he were leaving it on the street in New York. 

He would not be like these lazy bike riders who just want to snap a single lock quickly and then go on about their business. What right do they have to expect their bike to be there when they come back?

Bike Locking As Foreplay

Men with whom I have been intimate have told me that when I am sexually aroused a sorrowful look is on my face. They tell me that this look of sadness, for me, signifies desire. Do I shock you when I say that when I am locking up my bike, not always, but sometimes, say before I go into that gourmet store on Ave A to buy a Dortmunder cheese, and I finish the 7- to -9- minute process of locking my bike, I am buying the Dortmunder cheese, Ja, with a sorrowful look on my face? 

To be more precise, usually I am showing my sorrowful face just before I have intimate relations with a man. And to be versplacset, I do not put the Dortmunder cheese on any part of my body in the store or later at home. Yes, it meets all the requirements of our Hanseatic Purity Laws, why else would I pay $9 a pound for it, but for me the Dortmunder cheese is not an erotic aide. No, when the sorrowful look comes over my face in the gourmet store on Avenue A, it is because I know my bike has been securely fastened to the best of my ability and within the technical specifications of the rules and the tolerances of  the city of New York, in which I am currently a legal resident.

And if you don’t believe me, you can check my residency status at the Sixth Precinct on East 5^th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A.  Just make sure you don’t assume you can skimp on locking your bike when you visit the police station just because it will be locked in front of a police station. 

If borrowing someone’s bike is like safe sex, as the playwright Tom Stoppard puts it, then locking your bike on the street with someone is like foreplay.  I would never show my sorrowful face with a man who was too lazy to lock his bike securely, police station or no police station.

"Perfect Target"

“Perfect Target”

“It is a fact, that the poet had extremely flat feet and that his left leg was marginally shorter than the other, defects no doubt congenital and which leant to his gait a characteristic swaying motion. In an early poem Lorca complains of his ‘clumsy walk,’ almost certainly an allusion to this handicap, considering that it could be a reason for being rejected in love; and numerous friends later recalled his fear of crossing the street where, given his lack of agility, he felt he might be easily run over. There is no record of anyone ever having seen Lorca run.”

“Bunuel soon acquired a reputation as one of the most original characters staying at the Residencia. A sports addict, he could be seen each morning, irrespective of weather conditions, in shorts and often barefoot, running, jumping, doing press-ups, pummeling a punch ball or throwing his javelin.”

“There were shots and the marchers fled in panic, Nadal among them. When he looked back he saw the poet (Lorca) trying to escape as fast as his congenitally stiff gait would allow him (even fear could not galvanize him into running), his white suit making him a perfect target for the Guardia.”

passages from “Lorca”  by Ian Gibson

Lorca comments:

The truth is trained mostly at night. If I was going to run a loop through the Puerta del Sol district or somewhere else where everybody’s out at night, I’d wear a sweatshirt with the hood up. Being gay was tough enough for a Spanish poet in the twenties and thirties without letting on that I was a jock too. I would have really ruined by Andulusian troubadour routine if anybody but the guys on the track team saw me running.

The other thing, and one reason I never argued when the press portrayed me as “the Lora who never runs,” was that I was having a lot of trouble matching my personal bests for all the middle-distance races that I set in my hometown of Grenada as a high school runner. The few insiders who followed my performances at the sparsely attended winter indoor meets in Madrid know that my times were very slow. It wasn’t because, as some sportswriters subsequently alleged, of all the dissipation that was so popular among my peers at the Residencia. No, the reason I was so slow in college and afterward  (It probably didn’t even look like I was running.) was the lack of high altitude training available around the capital. Castile is, congenitally, a plain and I could forget about the high altitude training opportunities we took for granted in Granada with the Sierra Nevadas at our doorstep.

When the literary critics talk about how my work celebrates the “lost innocence of Andulusian peasant life,” they never catch on that on a personal level, never mind all that mythic people of the South stuff, what I missed most after leaving home was the chance to go for long runs in the mountains around Granada. 

I was really more of a cross-country and road runner than a track man. Readers should remember that in my Grenada years it was the basketball players who got all the media attention. To even go out for basketball in those years, Coach Lope de Vega insisted that we all run cross-country in the fall. So even though I was a starter on his basketball team, I did my hardest training on the roads and on the cross country circuits. As a college runner, the only races I could fit into my schedule were indoor track meets. I’m a little too tall at 5' ll to explode through the corners and get decent results on indoor tracks.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, these track meets, often held at Madrid’s Complutense University, would always have these field event morons like Bunel doing their thing in the infield while we tried to concentrate on running. If you ever saw that Aragonese pipsqueak congenitally risking our lives and limbs tossing his javelin around the dining hall at the Residencia, you could understand my nervousness at these meets in the vicinity of all these javelin throwers and shot-putters. So what you had was me running, if you could call it that, in my worst events, in a lousy competitive environment, and without the high altitude training that was the foundation of my successful high school running career. No wonder it sometimes seems that my college and adult running career didn’t happen.

Lorca’s basketball Coach Lope de Vega:

Much has been made of Lorca’s slowness and lack of agility on and off the court. As his coach for the three years he attended Grenada’s Incarnacion High School, I’d like to set the record straight about Lorca’s athletic skills and specifically, his contribution to my ball club.

Like a lot of your stereotypical “white catholic school” ballplayers, Lora was no speedster. Some of the opposing fans used to chant a little ditty calling him our “Guardia Immobilia” when he was introduced. Under my system he was able to compensate for his lack of foot speed. The so-called experts always said Chris Mullin of St. John’s was too slow for the pros, but he did OK in the last few NBA All-Star games. And no matter what anybody says about his quickness, Lora was a good position rebounder, although I doubt he could jump higher than his ankles.

Of course, you have to remember that in those days, you had a jump ball at the half-court stripe after each basket was scored. So this made the game slower and there was more room for a plodder like Lora on the squad.

It’s true he didn’t exactly run up and down the court. He had a stiff kind of shuffling walk, which, while it wasn’t pretty or fast did get him from the offensive end to the defensive end. If Lora set a pick on you, you stayed picked like it was congenital. He wasn’t afraid to mix it up under the boards. And he wasn’t a big kid either. We listed him at 5' 10 in the program, but I doubt if he made it to 5' 9'’ barefoot. 

When he got a chance to settle into our half-court offense and play like a small forward trying to post up the opposing guard if he got a mismatch, he could be an effective scorer. The further the other team could force him out of the paint, the more trouble he’d have scoring. And I’d be the first to admit that against a packed-in zone defense, he had problems putting the ball in the hole.

After he graduated and went up to Madrid and became a literary celebrity, he used to give these interviews to rags like Campo del Sol about how he invented the duende defense. The party line was that he and his pal, the Catalan guard Sal Dali, invented the famous strategy one year when they were playing summer ball in the league at the shore in Cienfuegos. (Dali was another slow, Catholic school kind of guard. But at least Dali, who had step or three on Lora, could sometimes drive the lane and penetrate to the hoop.)

According to the literature teachers here at Incarnacion, duende means the spirit that seizes a performer or writer and transports him to a Dionysian underworld of darkness and foreboding. Be that as it may, I can tell you that on a basketball court, the duende defense is nothing more than the full court press we used to run here at Incarnacion, with the requirement that when the other team gets the ball past the half-court mark, you collapse into a triangle and two with a chaser and play some hard-nosed, congenital zone defense.

As for his often-noted reluctance to cross the street, let me repeat that people have to think of Lora as a position ballplayer. We had no problems with Federico as long as the guys hung together coming and going from games, the way they tended to do on road trips. Home games, OK, he sometimes had a problem getting off the traffic island in the middle of the Paseo de Recoletos and into the gym. 

Speaking of Lorca’s years on my team, I have to mention a friend of his who transferred in to play ball for me one year while he was being red-shirted for the Valencia powerhouse Bolivar Poly. You want to talk about a hard-nosed player, you should have seen that scrappy Aragonese Louie “the One-Man Highlight Show” Bunel. He was the off-guard on the Juan y Isabel Parish Center Catholic Youth Organization team I coached in the summer of ‘28. I never saw anybody so willing to throw themselves on the floor diving for loose balls or to give themselves up to draw bone-wrenching charges the way Louie did. You had to see him swing his elbows to carve out some rebounding room for himself under the boards to believe this kid.

I never the saw the film he made in Paris in 1929 with Dali that made such a stink, but if people are going to get all squeamish about watching an eyeball get sliced up in a movie, we would have had peach marchers all over the gym when Bunel was clearing the boards.

I have to admit that Bunel was kind of a pain in the ass insisting on hauling his javelin around with us on road trips. But even there, in what seemed like such nutty behavior, he managed to make part of his nuttiness work for the team. If you ever tried to pop your shots over than Aragonese hard-ass while he was waving his javelin in your face, you’d have some idea of what it was like when I was playing for Salve Regina (It was coed back then, you wise asses.) and we went up against Power Memorial when they had Alcindor. Against either one, you practically had to loft your shots through the rafters.

Give Bunel credit too because it was his memoirs “My Last Three-Point Play” that summed up his generation of players best.

“Myself, Dali, and Lora set the pace for the modern game while we were active. Those French wimps could hardly inbound the ball at their own end. Take Breton with his idiotic manifestos, the only reason we didn’t run the scores up more when we played them at the old arena at the Palais Montparnasse is that we didn’t take them seriously. For all Appollonaire raved about the play of the French Surrealists, the only thing he got right was when he called Breton a “pure shooter.” You know what that really means, a guy that can’t do anything but shoot. Hey, if we could have ever have gotten Lorca to run, he would have dragged that stiff foot of his in rings around Breton.”

Clear Out to Canarsie : John Wray "L" Train Reading Parody

Clear Out to Canarsie  – The taking of Canarsie Seven Zero Fiver  – 

I put my knife to the motorman’s throat and forced him, first out of the cab and then off the train. Then I pushed down on the lever and headed for 6^th Avenue. 

By the time I was two paragraphs into reading my new novel, I’d gotten the hang of handling the bullhorn I was reading into and working the train’s controls so I could speed up and slow down following the green and red lights in the tunnel. 

The sixty or so people who had boarded the first car of the “L” train with me were listening intently. A lot of them were taking pictures with their phones. This thing was working! 

As we approached 6^th Avenue, the first stop, I managed to slow down and stop the train at the markers on the platform. Looking down the train, I saw that my editor, Eric Chinski, had overpowered the conductor in the back of the train. The conductor should have been in the last car where we expected him to be, but I saw Eric toss him out onto the platform, battered, bloody, not resisting, from the second- to-last car instead. There’s no sense even trying to launch a novel by taking over a train and giving a reading if your team can’t improvise. Way to go, Eric.

After we left 6^th Avenue, I continued reading, segueing into the section where my book switches from first person to close third person. I also remembered to check the indicator lights to make sure the doors were closed before we left the station.  By now, there were some people in the car who weren’t there for my reading. But menacing stares from my posse and the slight indication that some of the publicists from my house, FSG, were packing seemed to keep them quiet. Or maybe they were getting off in Manhattan and figured it wasn’t worth it to start bitching.

I knew one of the most demanding stations as well as one of the trickier passages to not lose the audience at was going to come when I had to simultaneously pull into Union Square and give readers a taste of my main character’s disordered  thoughts. The platform at Union Square has always posed a lot of challenges for novelists because if you don’t line up at the marks right, you are going to have the last car or two back in the tunnel when the doors open. But I hit the marks smoothly and gave readers a sense of the tormented thoughts of my schizophrenic teenager.

I know that what happened after we got to Brooklyn has gotten a lot of notice. Note how nobody talks about how smooth my stop and take-off from First Avenue was. I felt as bad as anyone because it was my publisher who paid for the free beer at the bar right near the first stop in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg. 

It isn’t true that I was sucking up to my editor when I decided to keep going. Yes, Eric always disparages the scene in Williamsburg, saying it’s like “Lord of the Flies,” but the real reason I didn’t stop at Bedford  was I didn’t think the short excerpt I’d been able to read up till then was enough to give readers a full idea of what I was trying to accomplish. Plus, I felt I had an obligation to the passengers who didn’t get on for my reading. What was I going to do, strand them at Bedford Avenue?

Sure, maybe going clear out to Canarsie was an overload, but for the listeners who stuck with me, I think they’d say it was worth it. 

There have been some questions about reading techniques while commandeering public transport vehicles at recent Authors’ Guild meetings. I just like to just start at the beginning of the book because then you don’t have to explain much about what’s going on, you don’t have to set up the scene while making sure the train is actually in the station when you open the doors.  

The novelist who took over the flight from JFK to London said it was really dicey landing the plane while reading his third most important character’s stream of consciousness riffs on cricket. He said the next time he does a take-over reading on a plane it’s going to be a Boeing not an Airbus because the Boeing’s auto-pilot is better. 

That raises the question of whether using a plane’s auto pilot while giving your reading is cheating or not. All I can say is that during my take-over of the “L” train for my current book’s launch or during the temporary capture of the captain’s deck on the Staten Island Ferry that I did for my second book, I was totally in command of the train and the boat all the time I was reading even during the sotto voce (SOTTO VOE CHAY) passages. 

The novelists that are coping my style, my so-called competitors, I have to laugh. Lethem taking over that cruise ship to read the imaginary letters from the chick scientist who’s trapped in outer space to her boyfriend back on earth. Even if it was a real takeover and the crew wasn’t in it with him and his publisher, how lame was that? What are you going to hit in the middle of the ocean? You could read half of ‘Infinite Jest” without having to steer around anything. For his next take-over reading, I’d like to see Mr. Motherless Brooklyn try it in the Panama Canal or while he’s docking at one of the West Side piers.

Then there’s the gal novelist, what’s her name, who took over the Roosevelt Island tram for a reading. Sounds lame already, right? Roosevelt Island tram, total capacity, what, twelve passengers? Nobody wants to discourage rookies, but come on. Maybe the Roosevelt Island tram is OK for somebody’s first book of stories, but nothing more. Because if you lower your standards that much, what’s next? You’re going to get some beginner novelist, right out of Breadloaf, wresting the controls from one of those hobbyists at the pond in Central Park with the radio-controlled sailboats and calling that a take-over reading.  I don’t think so. Not when I’ve taken my listeners clear out to Canarsie.