HIGH-sterical

the news is out and the reports are in: keith olbermann, self-selected leftious indignant media sith lord (jon stewart rocks) late of msnbc, and even later of current tv, has been fired.

want to know the punch line?

he's been replaced by eliot spitzer.

you simply cannot make this stuff up.

story here.

it's the left's version of rush limbaugh being fired and replaced by geraldo rivera. or something like that.

the press release tennis match is even more fun:

Current was ... founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers. Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it. (though it's got me laughing out loud that their "values" have them hiring spitzer).

olbermann's retort?

I'd like to apologize to my viewers and my staff for the failure of Current TV.

olbermann goes on to promise litigation.

too funny!

he shoots he scores

jon stewart scores again last night against cnn and a lot of the other cable news nonsense related to the trayvon martin tragedy. (highlight for me is the rag on olbermann, but the ewok bit following is pretty good, too).

start watching at the 6 minute mark for the best bits if you don't have the patience for the full almost 9. (there's some perfunctory stuff about cheney's heart at the top that's pretty forgettable).

http://www.hulu.com/watch/344111/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-cni-cable-news-investigators-and-dick-cheneys-heart

majors to market

the dub is papered closed and has been for weeks, and that end of market street is tough situation for any business not the athenian corner these days, and i'm even thinking the athenian is having to work extremely hard for what they do manage for business even so. (though if folks haven't had a handmade homemade burger from mike difonzo's king star cafe next door they are missing out on one of the best burgers in the city, and really ought to get down there and see what else he's cooking up). so it is that i find it curious how people react to the news (made obvious by the evening--yay!-- proceedings at the license commission the other day) that corey belanger, manager of majors pub on jackson street, would like to transfer his liquor license to the dubliner space and move his business there as well.

i've spent some good amount of time at majors, most often during d-tension's inimitable trivia nights there over the many past years, but also at other times, and my positive impression of the place was that it featured a respectful and respectable crowd of friendly characters, and that corey worked hard to fit it into both the bureaucracy and fabric of the city. the bar sponsors several special events in the city each year, even taking advantage of the lightly trafficked jackson street to raise a tent and employ local city musicians to perform--something woefully lacking in the program of the lowell folk festival--and the city would be much the poorer for lack of his efforts. i know people living at both loft27 across the street, and the apartments adjacent on the same side, and i have never heard a specific complaint about unreasonable noise, rude behavior, or dangerousness, though i know there are evenings during the tent events where the crowds carry potential for all three, though, to corey's credit, and the work of the lowell police details he always employs during the events, there has never been, to my awareness, a neighborhood issue which would give a resident pause to question whether or not mr belanger could be trusted to run his establishment right there on market street. everybody whom i know considers him and his bar to be a "good" neighbor.

so why is it that there are those elsewhere downtown suddenly concerned? i mean, not for nothing, but the old ownership and management of the dub was itself cause for neighborhood complaints for noise and other nuisances, and the longstanding existence of a bar in that space pretty much mean another one is going to go in there regardless of what people might wish otherwise. and, seriously, if i'm being asked to take a flyer on someone who might very well turn out to be the very next yussef, (i can't tell you how pleasant i find it that the fortunato's nightclub experience is still being held in abeyance by the city bureaucracy), i will tell you that the known track record of corey belanger as a bar proprieter is far more encouraging than the blind chance of someone new who has not had corey's experience managing a bar in downtown lowell.

speaking for myself, the dubliner was what amounts to my first "local" five years ago when i first moved downtown, and didn't have cable, so i had to rely upon the hospitality of my neighborhood hospitality businesses for bruins telecasts. (the old court was a longer walk, and their tv's were smaller, though their burgers and their beer were always better). i've seen bands there and had burgers there and appreciated the most recent renovations which opened up the space and gave it a more appealing ambiance (my opinion, not everyone agrees) and actually miss it even though i've now got NESN at home, and the back page for music. i, for one, am optimistic that corey will do a good job with the space, and it's never a bad thing to have more good business and more good people downtown, which i hope the new incarnation of majors would attract. jury is still out as to whether corey will know how to design a menu and run a kitchen (that part of the majors operation never could get itself off the ground) but even if he just does a decent burger and fries, and keeps the better beer selection, i'd be satisfied and stop in there more frequently again.

of course, if he pulls the harpoon IPA selection, all this positive opinion could change instantly...

i'm hoping to soon congratulate corey on his successful license petition and potential move, as well as welcome the removal of the brown paper signifying that yet another corner of downtown is rising again.

lazy journalism

ok, you know i'm already in a lather about invented quotes about invented conversations printed as "editorial commentary" in the yellow snipe at the mayor through his aide in a call that could not possibly have taken place as suggested in my previous/following post, so i'm already primed to take off on the slightest little thing, and you know well enough to know how i get when this happens, so feel free to skip this one because it's petty...

but petty is as petty does, and here i go:

so tops in the sun's "sunday style" section this week (yeah, i know, i'm late on my reading) is a feature piece on a chicago consignment store specializing in sneakers for "sneakerheads" who are all about collecting limited edition and otherwise notable footwear for anything but foot-wearing. it's an AP piece by an AP national writer, and it's good enough as far as that goes.

but did you know that the bean team at umass lowell submitted a short film on this exact subject to the most recent campus moviefest, which is the world's largest student film festival? (link here to the vid). (not if you relied on the sun for your local news, you didn't).

did you know that someone has already made the first attempt at a facebook "lowell sneakerheads" group for lowell sneakerheads to "like" and join? (not if you relied on the sun for your local news, you didn't).

did you know that wbur did a piece on this almost 3 years ago (!!!) in which lowell native chris sam was quoted? (link to story here). (not if you relied on the sun for your local news, you didn't).

so why is that? why is it that the supposedly "local" paper knee-jerks a punt of a nationally syndicated column without so much nary as half an attempt to make it relevant to their local readership???

tell me about the film. tell me about the local organizations. (i get shoes at persona on market street in downtown lowell, and i know of at least four other stores where you can get these kinds of footwear--do any of them have an opinion?) tell me about the local sneakerhead who already got mentioned in an NPR piece. tell me ANYTHING at all that involves ANYTHING related to my home city where i paid for this newspaper.

please?

or are you really all that lazy, publisher mr kendall wallace, and editor in chief mr jim "i know nothing about wine but let me tell you about it" campanini?

because there's very little other conclusion to be drawn...

yellow journalism

yellow as in gutless: the lengths to which the sun editor(s) will go to insert bias into otherwise and absolutely innocuous situations is galling. first disclosure, i am a neighbor of greg page who i have found always to be conscientious and respectful to an almost fault, and that is not to say i have any dog in the political fight(s) the sun is trying to document and/or invent, but just to say that first-hand experience calls certain things into immediate question. second disclosure, the axe i'm grinding against said sun bias is long-standing owing to the repeated incidents of such, many of which i have tried to document here.

anyway, in sunday's "the column", amidst what we can only hope are accurate portrayals of various highly-charged political situations in chelmsford and lowell, there is an almost throw-away blurb about a conversation purportedly to have been held between the new city mayor's aide and our own "statehouse delegation", as if said group sits together at recess and can be contacted en masse with universal and consistent perspective on the conversation, let alone be contacted directly and not via politically-motivated intermediaries as would perhaps, say, for the sake of argument, relay direct quotes of such conversations to a sun editor that may or may not represent what was actually said.

so the lead line of the three-paragraph snippet of "journalism" contains the charged phrase "rocky start", (though albeit left-handedly modified by the weak journalistic term "apparently"), and the payoff "proof" is a quote attributed to the mayor's aide that "but this is what the mayor wants" as somehow representing a smoking gun of political malfeasance through which vague misfortune must inevitably follow.

HUH?

can someone please tell me if it is, first of all, even possible to make a single simultaneous contact with all of senator donoghue, representative golden, representative murphy and representative nangle at the same time?

can someone please further tell me if, it if it is first of all NOT possible to make simultaneous contact with all of senator donoghue, representative golden, representative murphy and representative nangle at the same time, which seems absolutely logical to conclude, if it is even possible to have direct conversation with any one of the four regarding their schedule if not through a political intermediary much the same as mayor murphy relies on aide page to make the inquiries?

but, most of all, can someone please tell me the emotional age of a state politician who would find the phrase "but this is what the mayor wants" coming from a city official, mayor or otherwise, as the basis for establishing a "rocky start" to whatever it is that needs to be finished?

first of all, i've never found any of our state delegation, individually or en masse, as having anything but a mature and respectable emotional age, which is unlike my experience with the editors of the lowell sun. the way i see it, at WORST, some aide to some single one of the four state congresspeople may have found the imprimatur of an aide to a city mayor to try to ask for an appearance to be unseemly, and said aide to that single one of the four state congresspeople may, on the basis of which, then find it compelling to go whining out of school about it to the local news rag's local news ragger(s) with whom they may feel a certain sort of emotional age kinship. but did anyone ask donoghue, golden, murphy and/or nangle if they even knew about the request, and, if so, have an opinion about it, let alone have the opinion that it crossed some line into "rocky start" territory? can we at all be concerned about the thinness of skin that might be offended by something as completely inane as all this?

i get it. the state folks can't be here on tuesday. i'm thinking the city mayor's aide gets it too.

what i don't get is what the sun doesn't get about the simplicity of that?

first not warm day

spring soccer has resumed early (the grass is already green on the fields) and yesterday's inaugural run has proved that 45 degree rain absolutely sucks no matter what time of year in which it occurs, as well that conditioning a 51 year old body takes even effort than even a 50 year old one--or so it would seem. (youth is indeed, as sammy cahn so well put it, wasted on the young).

but life is good anytime you're able to get out and play, so no worries and no complaints here.

as for indoor play, this week coming up is full of very good things. peter lavender and his limbo souls are going to be headlining the week with three full sets at voices rock club over in centralville this coming saturday night, and you know the weekend starts best that started on wednesday night's open mic over at the back page.

life is good.

first warm day

chandler travis years ago wrote an homage to the first warm day of spring, recently released (for free if you got it hot off the press!) via his website for the world to enjoy. last night i got to see him with the catbirds (steve wood on guitar, who, yes, as advertised, made it loud, and i laughed when rikki told the sound guy who told steve it was too loud that it's always too loud, dinty child on something with eight strings, and something with five strings after one of those broke, and rikki bates on drums) at the rosebud diner in davis square. (man, can rikki play drums). chandler did the whole show barefoot, to the dismay of my more hygienic companions, which to me was just more perfect homage to the first entire warm week of this unprecedentedly early spring, and it was all very loudly good.

well, i will take a moment to describe the one moment that was not all very loudly good, and that was when the proven-inept sound guy (seriously--it's two guitars, a bass and drums--can you not find a way to get the vocals mixed in so you could actually hear more of them???) took it upon his stunningly diminutive self (seriously--there were some women there who were as many women are absolutely tiny, and he was tinier still) to bark at several people who had the temerity and the gall (the GALL!) to want to see the show some twenty or thirty feet from a back exit that he felt it incumbent upon himself to keep so absolutely clear that the 25 people in a space that easily fits 50 or more could find the exit in case rikki's rolls spontaneously combusted, which, i guess, isn't so far-fetched as to be as unbelievable as that may sound to you. i don't often feel other people deserve to be punched, but when i do, i do, and last night i did. right in his tiny little head.

but that's neither here nor there!

here is another of the first warm days of the year, and it's convertible time. i'm out!

not precisely geographically lowell but classic nonetheless

first of all: huge props to sun reporter evan lips for today's local news lead story--it was so good that while reading it aloud my houseguest, who is also a huge lisa redmond fan, as i am, could barely believe it wasn't one of hers--and there is no higher journalistic praise around these parts and as far as we're concerned the pulitzer people are just pretending, but lets not digress.

anyway, as evan gets all the details perfectly presented, a resident of a dracut senior public housing complex on mammoth road was, and i kid you not, and to evan's everlasting credit for realizing it was the single most entertaining element of the piece and putting it right up top there in the first expository paragraph, "watching a televised catholic mass when she heard what she described as a loud 'bang' ". on a wednesday. in the middle of the afternoon.

did i mention the full color photograph of the gray toyota camry embedded in the aforementioned senior center resident's bathroom?

"the driver, whose identity has not been released, was transported to a hospital along with another female passenger. residents said both live at the senior complex". (of course they do!!!). "police were seen questioning the driver of a brown"--and you simply cannot make this stuff up--"mercury sable sedan".

evan, kudos for the story, and for getting it all in there for us to enjoy. i'll let evan wrap up the elements of the tableau: "the toyota had jumped a curb, skidded over a sidewalk and rolled over a steel railing before careening into the side of [the] condo".

and you know it did. a little bump from behind by one oldster (who else drives mercury sables?) and then the next oldster's foot jams down on the wrong pedal (it all gets so confusing down there with all of them so close together!) and hilarity ensues. caveat to say it's only completely funny when one presumes the injuries involved are minor and the hospital transports precautionary, but given the state of things in the piece, i'd like to presume it to be true until evan tells me otherwise. 'cuz i'm now inclined to appreciate every little thing he says.

thanks, evan!

edited to add a poke at whoever the jamoke is who writes/edits the headlines of the sun's "stepping out" section--i wasn't able to find the word "filfilling" in the dictionary.

i swear it's a miracle the sun is still able to retain good writers for as long as they do, given how poorly managed and edited this paper has become...

convertibles for your feet

what are you doing inside reading this? for that matter, what am i doing inside writing it???

the weather this week has been nothing short of spectacular, and all the more so for it being the first of spring. in my 50 years of memory, this is unprecedented, and i'm not going to look this gift horse in the mouth, because it may very well never come again. or, if it does, then at least we will have these beautiful days to offset the scorch of high summer and need to get out all the more.

yeah, the car is pretty cool on days like these, made as it is for driving, but sandals, or things like my little crazy footwear here, or, best of all, bare feet, are all the more made for walking around in creation's glory, and we shouldn't ever substitute speed for more careful appreciation.

i hear there's a sausage cart at the end of middle street near central. (found out about it in howl in lowell--where else?). least i can do is wander over to check it out... get one with kraut and some hot mustard... stroll over to the concord river and enjoy it... and the day... and the pure joy of being alive.

downtown disorder part next

each successive dropped shoe in the trayvon martin killing is increasingly damning--now we learn his last minutes of life were spent running for his life from a pursuer bent on confrontation and violence, despite trayvon's pursuit of nothing more than a bottle of iced tea and a package of skittles during a break watching a tv basketball game. chilling. here's hoping the sanford police are thoroughly investigated for their thorough botching of the case by not breathalyzing and detaining the killer on the spot, but lets not digress.

anyway, it occurs to me, reading rob mill's report of last night's chase and subsequent stabbing in downtown lowell, that armed and potentially drunken sociopaths (analysis of the martin 911 tapes indicates the killer, zimmerman, was showing marked signs of intoxication in his speech) are a significant issue in more places than just gated communities like sanford, florida. observing last night was a remarkably quiet downtown lowell evening with barely anyone at even the few bars which remained open, let's hope that people braying for the proverbial pound of barroom flesh via increased controls of liquor establishments don't miss the potentially critical point that downtown drunken disorder is fueled in no small part by those drinking liquor store booze out of paper sacks, too.

no, i have no idea if the assailant in last night's non-fatal stabbing was drunk, any more than i have any proof beyond one commentator's opinion that zimmerman's speech betrayed signs of same. but i do see parallels anytime someone is run down and done harm in the street, and expect that the gravity of each and every situation is respected equally. to the lasting credit of the lowell fire department, police department and emt's, the response on central street last night (first hand witness here to at least that part of things) was thorough and professional. yellow tape was immediately strung across the entire block at the scene while attention was given to both the victim and the circumstances of his serious wounding, further while police cars blanketed and criss-crossed the neighborhood and those surrounding cruising in search of the perpetrator. (i walked well beyond downtown, perhaps a good half mile from the scene, and was passed by no fewer than six separate police patrols, and i'm guessing there were more after i went inside at my destination, too). it was all that could be done, and to my eyes, all that could be was. i hope the victim fully recovers, and quickly.

but i can't help but be left with the impression that not all that's dirty comes from the inside of a bar...

sublimity

anyone possessed of a car without a roof is today feeling the grace of creation like few others can imagine. i don't know who did what to earn this, but if i meet them later, i'll be buying.

veni vidi vici

i spend a week each year in vegas at a work-related convention/trade show with a couple of friends who also happen to be co-workers. in addition to dreading every working minute of the place, we indulge ourselves our preference for blackjack, since, after all, when in rome and all that. (hey, it's better than a lot of the other alternatives, that's for sure). i'll spare you the bragging details except to say that i drank for free for hours and had a good time doing it, and whenever you can say that about vegas (or foxwoods or atlantic city or insert your den of iniquity here) you're, as charlie sheen would put it, winning. the fact that my wallet came home intact is gravy.

tonight i'm buying. it's saturday night. i'm home where i always prefer to be. and do we really need a bigger excuse than that?

please, please, PUH-LEEEEEZE don't drink and drive.

no viva las vegas

funniest moment of the trip so far by far was getting "the hangover" via jet blue's in-seat video entertainment completely by coincincence. yeah, it's not nearly so funny edited for broadcast, even on cable, but it's still funny. laugh out loud funny. me and the two frat boys in my little boys club row were driving the old bingo ladies around us crazy all the way out here.

the reality of vegas, of course, isn't very funny at all unless you're laughing at yourself for even being here. (it's work--what can a guy with bills do?) out my window here at the mgm grand i'm looking at a supremely silly "skyline" of faux new york, where the statue of liberty stands in front of a coney island-esque coaster that's nearly as tall, all in front of the citi building (really? long island city???), a little barely-visible wall street down below, and a bookended skyline mash-up with the empire state on one side and the chrysler on the other. too funny--as if new york wasn't enough of a caricature of itself in the first place.

on the other side of the street we have a faux magic kingdom beside an homage to the original tropicana, which, as far as my sensibilities go, is about the real-est thing out here. yeah, the hooters casino is still across the street, and the major-chord chiming of the slots never changes. welcome to in-sin-cere city.

ugh.

the entertainment options are, if anything, even worse. (yes, celine dion, is STILL milking that insipid song at big ticket prices for anyone who has not found it possible to throw up yet). my project for the afternoon, in between work sessions, is to locate whatever vegas offers to parody a hockey bar, and then plan to sit in it tonight until it's time to go home to prepare for work tomorrow.

or, when my buddies all arrive later, we'll go out. you never know. ;-)

a commercial for responsible gun ownership

at the risk of being misunderstood, my comments in the preceding/following blog post are not to be construed as being anywhere at all in favor of unprincipled and unprepared gun ownership. i spent six months with an adult sitting beside me before i took my first unaccompanied drive in a car, and i'm going to insist my kids get at least that much time with me or their more-experienced grandfather before they're entrusted with a the far more lethal and hard-to-control hunk of metal. and i'm not holding myself above such a standard--i have taken the first and second level pistol training courses at instructional shooting, inc. (the top training outfit in the state as informed people have suggested to me) and i'm planning to train for a good long period of time with a son of a friend (who is an advanced firearms expert and licensed dealer) before i make room for such a weapon in my life. no joke--the statistics on gun owners being killed an injured with their own guns so far dwarf the statistics of their being used to stop a crime that you have to be an idiot not to understand the responsibility and need for care you are assuming when you choose to learn to shoot.

but i find it's a civil responsibility as a citizen to honor the second amendment of the constitution in its intent, and i will not shirk that responsibility out of fear. rather, i will rise to its challenge with utmost vigilance, care, and attention to safety as is humanly possible.

i believe you should too, but, thankfully, it's a choice we all can make for ourselves thanks to our founding document, either to carry or not to carry.

in my experience, and as a required part of receiving my firearms ID card, i will further say you can also trust to the experience and guidance of the lowell police in helping you make the right decisions, too. they do not want even one irresponsibly-owned gun on our streets, and we all should be doing all we can to support them in this.

we're lucky to live in a country such as ours. let's do our part to respect that, and to honor it in our personal decisions.

un-fucking-believable

for this one i won't even invoke the 15 year old daughter rule. and for this one, ON PURPOSE, i'm going to link the faux news coverage because the comments by judge anthony napolitano are SPOT ON, and, not for nothing, but themselves, in my opinion, more "fair and balanced" than is deserved by the topic. this is truly chilling, and i would welcome any member of the greater lowell area democrats to come up with a rationalization for how they can possibly support an administration that demands, nae, outright confiscates from the people and the Constitution, the imprimatur to assassinate citizens it and it alone deems dangerous without due judicial process, arguing, speciously, that "due process" never included the word judicial so they're just going to substitute "executive branch" review in its place. three branches? between usurping congress' war powers and now this, we're down to just one. and that's wrong. pure wrong.

coverage here.

our government can't even answer for us whether or not they're going to respect any difference between american soil and elsewhere before the killings begin.

if you are not appalled, you are not paying attention.

i'm buying a weapon this weekend. anyone who knows me knows how averse i am to guns in my home. (stats prove you are far more likely to be killed by your own gun than have opportunity to use it in the stopping of a crime). but the second amendment was written precisely for this usurpation of power by an unjust regime, and i am NOT going to leave this country this way for my children without standing up for what is right.

chilled yourself at the prospect of one lunatic with one gun??? your government has far more lunatics with far more guns, and niemoller had it right. when they come for you, who is going to say something?

un-fucking-believable.

but here we are.

reviewing the reviews

nobody at either outfit is going to want anyone to be doing this, (for different reasons--why would howl want to be seen comparing itself to dinosaur journalism, and why would the sun want to be seen to be the dinosaur it is?), but, see, it's gotta be done:

thursday is "steppin' out" day at the lowell sun, and each week they publish their anemic little most-anything-but-local fish-wrapper purportedly to document lowell and surrounding arts and entertainment. but every day is "howl in lowell" day at howl in lowell, and, even at not even a week old, the actually-local and every-day website, as they say, puts out. so let's take a tour through each, shall we?

the most obvious difference you see today, today being NOT jack kerouac's birthday, is that howl is already on to timely and topical cultural happenings. of course, because of advantages inherent in web publishing, anyone with an interest in yesterday's news can easily find it there, (howl's kerouac pieces include videos, too), but anyone with an interest in what's actually going on TODAY is far better off in the dynamic web environment than on the static and every-second-getting-more out-of-date printed page.

steppin' out's second page featuers a nashua middle school auditorium concert, a worcester saint patties day irish-fest, and a boston symphony hall salute to--yes--video game music, the tickets for all three of which together would cost an individual almost $100 if one were willing to settle for balcony seating for the latter two of them, or $176 for the good seats. (that's for ONE--with a date we're now over $350).

howl's second-level features are both more numerous, as well as more lowell: in arts & culture, we have barbara gagel's abstract visual interpretation of kerouac's "the scripture of golden eternity" at the ayer lofts from march 8th through march 30th. (free). in music & nightlife, we have a piece on local lowell band hot day at the zoo and their upcoming shows that include boston's paradise rock club. ($15). in food & drink, we have four restaurant recommendations (seafood: captain john's, home cooking: whipple cafe, seasoned meats: IV seasons, and best burger: furey's cafe, meals at all four of which will run you WAY less than $160 which is what you'll still have leftover after skipping the sun's suggestions).

beyond the top features, the sun finds room for an art review, (glenn szegedy's "from the mud" exhibition at the loading dock gallery), a performance plug, (dee ryan's comedy reading at the MRT on the 26th), a recap of lowell summer music bookings, and some pedestrian plonk platitudes from self-avowed wine novice and sun editor jim campanini. there's a tiny little call-out for the middlesex community college spring concert series, a couple of mainstream movie reviews, and a fashion feature from zoe malliaros to complete the list. (and i mean complete--that's all there is, folks).

in howl under the fold, so to speak, we have a semi-autobiographical lowell cultural council-sponsored one-woman show by obehi janice, a review by charlie galloway of kerouac's lost novel, "the sea is my brother", a made in LA documentary being featured as part of lowell women's week, a video blog by visual artist, downtown business owner (humanity boutique) and emeritus city councilor franky descoteaux on style, fashion and trends, a call-out for bruce and melanie rosenbaum's steampunk creations and curriculum at umass lowell, a movie review by lowell film collaborative co-founder brett cromwell of a decidedly UN-mainstream film, sundance-festival-screened bellflower, a feature piece on jack kerouac by andrea gregory, a piece on the dropkick murphy's who are appearing at the tsongas on st patties day, an all-inclusive alternative nightlife feature on monthly "the A list" events at the olympia's zorba room, a feature piece on award-winning local act "gentlemen hall", a review of kathleen edwards' new recording once again by brett cromwell, a wine discussion by actual wine-related businessman, robert nason of market street market, a feature piece on moostone's new head chef, ex of mistral in boston and winning rave reviews now in the merrimack valley, a new signature cocktail recipe and discussion with back page barkeep courtney sott, a new cable show by jerry bisantz featuring local playwrights "live from studio A", (including video, as do many of the other pieces though i'm getting cramps from typing already)...

get the gist?

howl is already covering more, and more deeply, than the sun with all it's paid staff and years of contacts in the city. (though, to be fair, the sun pays its people shit as is now customary in the dinosaur publishing industry, and stretches them far too often far too thin to be truly at their best in any one feature area).

and don't get me started about the events listings. see here for yourself, and compare it to what you won't be able to find in the sun.

not even close.

if you're not howling in lowell, you aren't paying attention. ;-)

the other shoe's other shoe

between milk and bullfighting, it's fascinating to read the blowback from taking a position short of what PETA would insist. many are opposed to the exploitation they see implicit in dairy farming, not to mention the practical requirements of same (yes, the boy cows do eventually get sent to the abattoir), and most definitely most everyone is appalled at everything related to bullfighting.

myself, i think it is grace from providence that we enjoy the luxury of such opinions.

domesticating cattle was an important achievement for the survival of our species in much of the world where grasslands exist. grasslands, if you think about them, exist specifically because weather and agriculture conditions can't support higher levels of plant species, (fruit trees, berry bushes, legume and other vegetable plants, etc.), and between the absence of such, and the implicit shortage of water and other nutrients to be put back into the soil to grow more sustaining crops even if they wanted to, our ancestors were put in a dire position that most of us now would shudder to contemplate.

yet cattle could turn grass into high-quality protein and high-energy fat, and yield bone and sinew for tools and other necessities, and produce hide for weatherproof clothing and shelter.

we know now that there are more efficient ways to produce all of these things, but if you lived where there were no trees and no otherwise arable soil, you and your small clan of desperate-to-survive relatives would be damn grateful to have a cow to milk, and a steer to eat. so it is that the practice of dairy farming has been passed down through the generations, and continued in places, like the rugged hills of vermont, where other types of agriculture are difficult if not impossible to maintain. and you can kiss my ass if you want to imply that there's something unethical about the origins and maintenance of the practice. yup, many not blessed with the genetic bequest of lactose tolerance have their own legitimate objection, but those of us born of a long line of dairy farmers, or from peoples inclusive of the same, would be pretty hypocritical to diss the legacy.

as for bullfighting, if you bother to research what you might otherwise correctly recognize as a barbaric practice, you'll find that the peoples of spain, where sere geography and brutal climate put the edge so much closer to their historic survival than many of us would be able to sleep at night to contemplate, were arguably even more ethical and respectful of the agents of their livelihoods than even we who abhor the practice today.

the choices were brutal. there was not enough feed to support both the milk-yielding cows, as well as their meat-producing brethren, (save those necessary for stud), so the necessity was to butcher the males, period. but being so close to these animals, and emotionally attached to them as well, it proved impossible for these decidedly moral people to sacrifice these noble animals without recognition, ceremony, and chance for survival.

so, yes, a brutal practice was created, that gave each bull its moment to earn its keep. yes, almost all were butchered, as they would have been for the survival of the human species in any case. but those fewer whose spirits earned them the recognition were revered and their ears and tails preserved to remember them, and those fewer still who fought longest and hardest to survive were spared, and chosen for stud, and held in the highest possible regard--heights which nigh-on approached religious reverence.

if you go to andalusia in southern spain, you will find the image of the bull on almost everything from one end of the countryside to the other. these are not the tokens of a people who were grown from senseless slaughter and a lack of appreciation for the agencies of their survival. yes, today, there is no need nor place for the practice, except, i would posit, as a respected memory in genuflection to our roots and our debts to our ancestors who gave everything, and did everything they could, to maintain our place in this world.

people who reflexively and without regard criticize both are, to my mind, the ones lacking in moral insight. and i'm raising this glass of shaw farms' finest to those who see more clearly.

and in other news...

you know i'm a dairy guy. well this is just in via naturalnews.com: a recent harvard university study on the effects of ingesting milk from farms employing concentrated animal feeding operations and using BST and other hormones and unnatural medications, has linked the factory-farmed milk to dangerously high levels of estrone sulfate, an estrogen compound linked to testicular, prostate and breast cancers.

yup, that big brand factory milk that everyone has been feeding to their kids because they didn't know any better is killing them.

even here in our supposedly enlightened state of massachusetts, our own department of public health (now there's an oxymoron) requires organic milk producers who do NOT use such practices and feed additives, if they want to use the word "organic" to describe their milk, to also include the statement that "no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST treated and non- rBST treated cows". (props to warren shaw at shaw farm for the back story on that part). as you can see above, harvard university would otherwise beg to differ...

whoever thinks that bigger government is better government has their head up their ever more likely to be cancer-riddled ass. monsanto and the big factory farm lobby owns our politics even way up here in new england, and it's killing our natural local dairy farmers' businesses as well as us in the process--and it's even illegal to even tell you about it on the label.

caveat emptor. talk to your local dairy farmer, and invest the extra money in your good health. we all win if you do. we all lose if you don't.

the smoking gun

big thanks to a link posted with a comment on a previous post--here's a map showing income distribution in the city by precinct taken from a recent salem state study:



the source document can be found here: http://dgl.salemstate.edu/geography/Profs/luna/projects/2010_01Spring/GPH903/LowellVoterReport2010reduced.pdf

so, mr kendall wallace, what is your explanation for characterizing downtown residents as "middle and upper"?? ignorance? intellectual laziness? typographical error not corrected by your crack editing staff? the city, especially its downtown residents, would like to know.

middle and upper

sunday's sun's publisher's column left-handedly complimented while right-handedly disparaging downtown residents as being of a "middle and upper income group", whereas the rest of the city was given fuller credit for being comprised of a "middle class population that cares deeply about remaining in the city". (and you know my colorful word to describe the essence of all of this). well, it's still got me steamed a day later, so i thought i'd dig a little for some stats on our four residential city zipcodes to see exactly who was more "middle and upper" as opposed to something less well-heeled. can you guess what i found?

the first and most obvious place to go looking for "middle and upper", apparently for both the bigots at the sun, as well as those of us who have ever taken the drive out andover street to see all the big houses, would of course be belvidere, whose zipcode, 01852, is shared with the supposedly "middle and upper" downtown. think it's number one in the city? number two? guess again. even with all the wealth perched on the hill overlooking lowell's lower merrimack, the offsetting "wealth" (or absence thereof) downtown actually sinks the belvidere neighborhood to third out of four in terms of average household income in the city of lowell. ($38,576, and you can see the details here).

who is number one? well, they do have a golf course and some pretty swanky streets, so not as much of a surprise once you know belvidere is out of the running to guess that the 01851 highlands would score fairly well. ($42,081 average household income, the details of which are here).

number two, still way ahead of downtown/belvidere is 01850 centralville. ($40,418 average household income, the details of which are here).

yeah, that's right, only 01854 pawtucketville manages to find itself beneath downtown/belvidere in terms of average household income. ($35,371, the details of which are here).

so let's play that "make up an opinion and put it out there on nothing more than pure speculation" game that the sun so frequently enjoys, and make a simple deduction based on what we've seen above, shall we? i'll tell you that as much as i respect the figures on the highlands, the consistently upscale (relatively speaking for lowell at the very least, though i'd venture to say the neighborhood would look good in virtually any community in massachusetts including the wealthier suburbs like andover and etc.) upper belvidere neighborhood cannot possibly be brought so low by lower belvidere and back central that a supposedly "middle and upper" downtown couldn't carry it to a higher than third-out-of-fourth in the city among its zipcodes. that is, unless, contrary to the sun's capricious and unsupportable description of our downtown as "middle and upper", such opinion is concocted of complete horseshit. (i'm an equal opportunity barnyard excrement writer, yes i am).

anyone possessing any better income demography is welcome to contribute it here. but i'll first put out the invitation with a standing wager than any neighborhood populated by artists is going to appear way down deep at the bottom of any income ranking, and you have to be an idiot (yes, i'm calling the sun publisher an idiot on this one) to write otherwise. what shall we wager? how about dinner at any downtown eatery patronized primarily by downtownies. (i.e. not la boniche for damn sure). i'll propose viet-thai, but you can make a counterproposal with your contribution. i'm anything but exclusive--i can't afford to be.

mr kendall wallace? anybody???

bullshit

i'm calling bullshit (yet again) on the lowell sun and its publisher and (every other yahoo who reads it and agrees) with its editorial bias and inexplicably inexorable tendency towards characterizing downtown residents as of a "middle and upper income group" and thus somehow distant and isolated from the "middle class population that cares deeply about remaining in the city".

bullshit.

complete bullshit. (and wtf are these people smoking to think it and say it???)

i'm no demographer, but if you walk the street in front of my building you know who you are going to see 3 people out of 4? i'll tell you--you'll see government assistance grantees sitting in various ambulatory aids and on park benches killing time between their monthly checks and looking forward to the few days a month they can choose not to go without three square meals and a cup of coffee instead of paying their ever-increasing bills. (seriously--a woman in my building cooks meals to bring out to them because she can't stand to see how the rest of the city and the rest of the world walks by without seeing them).

want to know one of the largest reasons why this particular "middle and upper income group" designee bought a condo downtown instead of a home somewhere else in the city? because i couldn't afford to live anywhere else, that's why. want to know what the two bedroom condos next door are listed for these days? under $100,000, and several under $50,000. care to guess how many of the "middle class population that cares deeply about remaining in the city" live in a home that's valued at less than that? we could always head down to the assessors office and ask, but i'll tell you right now you're not going to find many.

yet there's a myth propagated by the sun's publisher and editor, apparently contrived to pander to its readership in the outer neighborhoods, that the downtown somehow represents a privileged class of artier-and-richer-than-you "blow ins" who neither care nor will stay to fight for this city.

and that's bullshit.

complete and utter bullshit.

ever meet an artist and take a real good look at their clothes, and, if they are one of the lucky few, the car that they try to drive when it's still running? ever stop to think about what it means to toil endlessly to create things that other people enjoy, but will still 99% of the time decline to pay for? (what's the last piece of hand-created art you ever paid for, and how much did you pay for it, and how far do you think that much money goes when you're trying to live on it?) ever shake hands with a musician and ask them if they can afford to play music and still not work another fulltime job (or two) in order to pay their bills? ever remember what it's like to be a student putting yourself through school and living with roommates and on ramen noodles just to be able to afford one more semester and hope for better in the future? ever talk to those matriculated to the pair of beauty schools on central street about their income and their prospects once out in their service jobs that they don't even have probability to be able to find? ever talk to a downtown shop owner who both lives and works here about the economics of trying to survive catering to this particular neighborhood?

"middle and upper"? are you kidding me?

because if the answer to any one of these questions above is yes, then, congratulations, you've just glimpsed the tip of the economic iceberg that is life in downtown lowell, and the real story that remains every day uncovered in our newspaper, and in the opinions of far too many of our outer neighborhood denizens. see those pretty and fancy mill residences, like loft 27 and mass mills? i'm here to tell you (since your newspaper won't) that they and many (most?) other rental places downtown are surviving in desperation by housing section 8 recipients, and not theirs or anyone else's idea of "middle and upper". (check out the "downtown disorder" crime stats, and then ask the superintendent what percentage of those numbers are domestic calls for the riverview towers).

i'm a lucky guy. i save my money and i am happy and proud to spend it downtown. but i'm so far in the minority to be able to afford to do even just that much, that if you ask anyone who knows me, they're fairly likely to tell you that i'm the guy they know that spends more time and money out and about down here than anyone else they know, and i'm here to tell you i'm doing all that on what's left of a salary after alimony, child support and college tuition takes their bite out of me. (and other personal obligations that i'm too proud to tell you about here, but that take every last nickel, believe you me). i have no idea how a shopkeeper plans to make their living on that, but "middle and upper" is absolutely not going to describe it.

ever eat in ricardo's or la boniche and look around and try to guess how many of the "middle and upper" folks are actually residents of downtown? maybe you're at a disadvantage because you don't live down here and wouldn't recognize a downtown resident if they shook your hand or asked you for change for a cup of coffee. but i live down here, and i do recognize downtown residents fairly well after 5 years, and i'll tell you the people dropping that money on their "fine dining" are far and away from elsewhere. maybe they're the "middle class population that cares deeply about remaining in the city" but they're not from downtown here. and you want to know why? because precious few people i know living in my neighborhood can afford to eat there.

want to know where downtownies eat? places like viet-thai. (all you can eat for lunch for $7.95, and where entrees for dinner start at $5.95). sammy's pizza. (two large cheese pies for $15.99 with a coupon). robinson's. (where a cheeseburger costs you less than $4). that's where.

want to know where we're going? nowhere.

and we're proud to say that.

because we love this city. and we're every bit the "population that cares deeply about remaining in the city". we're just a hell of a lot closer to be out on the street than a lot of people ever care to consider or realize, and sick and completely bullshit and tired of being characterized as some sort of privileged class of "blow-in" assholes.

i'd gladly take the cash if someone were offering to become something more like that, as i'm sure would 99% of downtown. but nobody's offering, and we're continuing to do the best we can with what we have. (no thanks to the lowell sun).

ironically, one of my neighbors just made an economic decision to stop subscribing to the paper. go figure. in this world of never-enough, it's pretty clear what's not worth it.

bullshit.

yes i am.

edited to add, because i've seen comments elsewhere questioning the point about loft 27 and other places and section 8: this is no word of a lie, and just because you or someone you know applied for an apartment and saw the size of the rent they ask retail, does not mean that the hallways aren't already full of section 8 people being used to keep occupancy rates up while they troll for "middle and upper" would-be downtownies to pay full freight, of which there aren't enough to even keep an apartment building afloat. (and if you like, i'll show you where the real estate agents hide their key lockboxes outside the big condos downtown so you can see the dozens of them outside the buildings making mute testimony to the futility of trying to find buyers). seriously--get downtown here and see for yourself. the reason businesses have so much trouble down here is because too many of their neighbors can't afford rent, let alone food, let alone to go out. but the sun's publisher still calls us "middle and upper". disgusting, irresponsible, and loathsome. but that's our sun.

darwin lives

first of all, the disclaimers: 1. it's a pure tragedy when anyone loses their life. 2. she was 83, so not in danger of reproducing. 3. but do people even think anymore???

i'm writing, of course, about the ap story about the 83 year old georgia woman who was killed via being washed into a creek from a drainage pipe into which she had always promised her relatives she'd flee in the face of cataclysmic weather (no word if said relatives either did not take her seriously, or who did not bother to explain the futility of trying to hide from precipitation in a culvert designed specifically to concentrate such) since her house did not have a basement.

the ap says "hers is the first storm-related death reported in georgia", but i say isn't it just proof that people can get exactly what they ask for if they ask for it hard enough?

darwin wins this round.

the ambulance

wednesday night, while accidentally doing my very best townshend homage (corey b has dubbed them "uke heroics" and it's even funnier considering how un-heroic my playing is) during zevon's lawyers guns and money, i wound up with twice the driftwood--the glue heroically holding the neck to the body abruptly surrendered--and none of a functioning instrument with which i had started. i was surprised, given how much i love this little amalgamation of wood and strings and everything it does for me both emotionally and physically, how relaxed i was about the catastrophe, but i also realized in the same moment that dr carl was in the house, and i could already feel the healing beginning. i didn't even have to ask. carls custom guitars to the rescue.

i feel pretty lucky here in shangri-lowell. i have bill whitsett and whitsett guitar works right across the street. (if you aren't friends with bill via facebook and perving to all his guitar porn pictures of work in process, you are definitely missing something). i have carl johnson and carl's custom guitars right down the street. and i apparently have no end to the need for such craftsmen because it's never been about taking it easy on my instruments with me. (counting the days til the rancid show at the house of blues!)

in the immortal words of otis day of otis day and the knights:

"HIT IT!"