Where Has All the Power Gone?

I would urge anyone who missed it tonight to catch PBS's "American Masters" program on the great Pete Seeger.

I know that most of you young whippersnappers reading this blog probably have very little idea, or none at all, about who this guy was and is. But when you see the career he had, the life he built for himself and for so many others, the loving and mighty things he did when he didn't have to do anything of the sort and indeed, did it to his and his family's cost, because he had a conscience that wouldn't let him do anything else, as a man and even more as an artist, I would hope to hell you'll feel deprived and shallow and, yes, ashamed of the kind of stuff you've obediently opened for and swallowed down and didn't even think twice.

And it's NOT all right.

So watch it.

These Sad Black Swans

I see where two more souls have added themselves to the appalling tally of suicided young folk in Bridgend, Wales.

The grim count has been going on for over a year: healthy, apparently happy kids in this little corner of Cymry killing themselves out of, again apparently, nowhere.

Except it isn't out of nowhere, really, or maybe not, anyway. The horrifying thinking is that it's all copycat suicides, fed by the websites Facebook and Bebo, which romanticize it by "memorial" pages. Friends or acquaintances post their grief, or envy, or whatever it is, then go home and hang themselves to show support. Or something.

I find this both numbingly sad and incandescently outraging. I want to hug these kids till they squeak, so that they know they're not alone, and at the same time I long to slap them silly so they know how incredibly stupid and unbelievably selfish they are being.

There's no peace or surcease in suicide, kids. You only get yourself into more, and different, trouble than you do if you stay here and tough it out. And IT WILL GET BETTER. I swear. If you want it to. I won't say it won't hurt, fighting through. Because it will. A lot. And nor will I say it isn't incredibly hard, again because it is.

But it can be done. You can do it.

We all know something of the pain and despair that can cause someone, especially a young someone, to want to kill themselves. It hurts. Whatever it is, it hurts unbearably. But it's not romantic and it's nothing special and it certainly is not cool. It just is. But also it won't last forever. And the real waste and shame and, yes, sin is to believe it WILL last forever and to act accordingly.

I'm no counselor. I'm not trained as one and I don't see my role as being one. But if I can say something, so much as a single word, to be as a tiny pebble in the path to turn someone's course away from this yawning cliff, then please hear it. Once you're gone, you're gone. And you may end up somewhere you really would rather not be.

So, you know, don't. Please. No more.



The roll of the dead:

2007
Dale Crole, 18, hanged Jan 5
David Dilling, 19, hanged Feb 18
Thomas Davies, 20, hanged Feb 25
Allyn Price, 21, hanged April
James Knight, 26, hanged May 17
Leigh Jenkins, 22, hanged June 3
Zachery Barnes, 17, hanged Aug 11
Jason Williams, 21, hanged Aug 23
Andrew O'Neill, 19, hanged Sept 19
Luke Goodridge, 20, hanged Nov
Liam Clarke, 20, hanged Dec 27

2008
Gareth Morgan, 27, hanged Jan
Natasha Randall, 17, hanged Jan 17
Angeline Fuller, 18, hanged Feb 4
Nathaniel Pritchard, 15, hanged Feb 13
Kelly Stephenson, 20, Nathaniel's cousin, hanged Feb 13

Ticker(tape) Shock

I've been watching the NY Giants' tickertape parade up Broadway while waiting to go out and vote this afternoon, and I've been struck by a few things.

Mostly, how classy and nice the Giants organization seems by comparison to other NY sports organizations the Skankees oops did I say that out loud well it's no secret.

For one thing, the footballers didn't take their victory for granted the way the Wankees do: the fetid orcs from the Bronx and their Dark Lord Sauronbrenner are sore winners, and you can't even IMAGINE what they're like when they lose. And Boston too was arrogant and self-entitled, and hence deserved to get flattened.

Today, in the parade, Giants were jumping off their floats as they sailed up Broadway and mingling with the delirious fans alongside, slapping high fives, then jogging blocks to jump back aboard the float, everybody just tickled pink. Or blue.

Fans would fling them T-shirts and caps, like Mardi Gras in reverse, and the players would sign happily and toss them back. Sometimes the cops walking alongside the floats would actually hand-deliver the shirts and caps, and once signed, bring them back to the owners. (I do believe one Giant was even tossing Mardi Gras beads to the crowd, and plenty of footballs went flying too. Awesome.)

It was a pleasure to watch, and all the commentators said they'd never seen anything like it. Of course, had my Mets won the 2000 Subway Series, or indeed any other since, I like to think they would have been as into it and having as much fun with it as the Giants.

Oh, and all the family stories: the team owners, the Manning boys. Really charming.

And a pleasant change from the baseball ick now going on in Washington.

I'm not a bandwagoner, and I really do loathe football, except for those two or three amazing moments per game when stuff actually happens, so I won't be a fan of the game anytime soon. But the boys in blue have made New Yorkers very happy, and I'm nothing if not a New Yorker.

Order has been restored to the universe: New York rules. Suck on THAT, Boston!

Drinking the Kool-Aid

Well, my fellow Americans, tomorrow is the much-ballyhooed "Super Tuesday", and if predictions are anything like near the mark, the Democratic and Repuglican presidential candidates could find their ranks sharply winnowed.

Or not. It could come to pass that the victories will be spread out over the 20 state primaries, with every candidate getting an inconclusive slice of the cake.

But before that happens, I wanted to address something that's been disturbing me for a while now, and that is the unqualified anointing of Senator Barack Obama as some sort of wizard of change.

NOT. I see him as the man behind the curtain. I find him substanceless, naive, arrogant and entitled. He's running on fumes of poetry and rhetoric, with a pretty empty tank.

Yeah, he opposed the war. Big whoop. His health care plan sucks (will cover far fewer people than Senator Clinton's will, at greater cost), he doesn't appear to have a real plan for getting out of Iraq, and all he does is bellow, in an unsettlingly preacherly manner, about "change."

Change would be great. We really need it. I just don't see where he's the one to bring it. His whole campaign seems to me like the Emperor's New Clothes, everybody praising the spiffy new outfit until the beady-eyed kid points out the fact that the Emperor is nekkid.

Plus the fact that St. Oprah the Self-Important has now muscled in again on the act. Maybe she's hoping for the second spot on the Barack ticket, an African-American twofer. I don't know, but I find her a pander at best, a hypocrite at worst. (Also she hates Pagans and won't have any on her TV show, how tolerant is that??) She's certainly entitled to support whom she will, but I get the feeling, and I could be utterly mistaken, that she went for the black man over the woman. Because that's what she does.

I'm no racist. I would have voted for Dr. King in a nanosecond, for Philosopher-Emperor if that was on. I'd absolutely love to see a black, a Hispanic, an Asian president. But I resent being bullied into supporting Obama JUST because he's black.

By the same token, I don't support Hillary JUST because she's a woman. I support her because, despite her flaws, and they are many, she's done a great job as my Senator and I absolutely believe she would do a great job as President.

If it comes down to Hillary vs. McCain, I really worry. McCain will keep us in the Middle East for the next hundred years and possibly precipitate the use of nukes. Ours or theirs. Or both. Certainly he won't be able to dial back terrorism here at home; he will instead, by his pigheaded policies, dial it up. To our cost.

And I'm very much afraid that he might win in spite of the unmitigated horror of the last eight years.

Getting back to Barack: I look at him and I do not see JFK, despite Teddy's and Caroline's endorsements. I see a stalk, a husk, propped up against the wind by people who don't know any better and who are desperate for a JFK of their own, like the wannabes who went to Woodstock II. Sorry, folks, it's not the same! (And I note that three of RFK's kids have endorsed Hillary.) I hear graceless and empty rhetoric (even his poetic flights suck). I see people drinking the Obama Kool-Aid and I fear.

Yes, it would indeed be change. But it wouldn't be the RIGHT change.

Winter Weekend

Hardly winter, the damn temperature was in the high 40's. Why oh why won't it snoooooooow??? There was zip measurable flakefall on the ground in Manhattan through January...

But two nice things:

I was invited to a real fashion show, during Fashion Week, which is now happening. James Coviello, the guy who designed the hat I'm wearing in the accompanying picture, has branched out into clothes as well, and his partner/assistant, Robbie Clemovich, got in touch with me on MySpace. They very kindly invited me to the fall showing, which was today at a cool old hotel, the Prince George, in the Little India neighborhood (East 20's around Lex/Park Ave South).

They had very cleverly set it up in the huge ballroom, with gorgeous painted paneled ceilings and walls, so that all the viewer chairs were on the ballroom floors in three sections, and the models walked down between two sections then went around and up the other. Kind of like a racetrack, with "stands" on both sides and people in the infield facing in two directions. So there were twice as many people in the front rows as usual.

Including me! I had a seat right in front, and had to make sure to keep my feet under the chair so I wouldn't trip up the models.

If you've never been to one of these (and this is only my second; the first being a fall show of Anna Sui's a few years back), they're incredibly loud (music) and incredibly bright (spotlights on the models glaring right in your face). And they go by incredibly quickly: there were 30 outfits being shown, and the whole show start to finish took less than twenty minutes. The girls just walk out past you and are gone in a few seconds. And they really do that high-stepping crossover walk you see on TV.

The clothes were lovely, but not for me; all for young folks, and I really never got into that mix and match of flippy-skirted dresses with (gorgeous) cable knit sweater coats. Though there was a terrific mushroom wool one. The girls were all wearing fabulous teal tights, which looked great, and some had feathery hats on. My hat's nicer, though...

So I wore the black leather one, most piratical, to the show, and went backstage after, by invitation, to say hi to James, who instantly recognized both the hat and me, and to Robbie, who was there with their adorable black affenpinscher, Francis. Very sweet, all three of them.

2) Then I went to the new Second Avenue Deli, which has just reopened on East 33rd Street between Lex and Third Avenues. (But is still called the Second Avenue Deli, which should drive tourists nuts.)

The 2AD was a fixture in the East Village for sixty years or so, right down the block from me, and in my decades of residence here I probably nipped in for takeout at LEAST once a week, if not more. I took Jim there, and Kathleen, and Jim's brother Andy and his family, everyone I knew.

So when it closed two years ago (the landlord raised the rent from $20,000 to $35,000...yes, that's per MONTH...and the Lebewohl family, who had founded and still own the place, couldn't afford it. Shortsighted of them not to have bought the building, as other EV institutions have done and so survived, but there it is), locals and foodies everywhere were devastated.

But now it's back! And when I went in tonight three of the countermen and the old guy at the cash register (a Lebewohl) remembered me. I was thrilled.

It's a lot smaller than the old place, unfortunately, and some of the prices got raised about 25%, so not quite the bargain it was. But I don't care. It's BACK!

And I had my usual lovely corned beef sandwich, and took home two quarts of the best chicken soup in the world and two quarts of the best potato salad that ever lived.

So I am happy. And replete. Too happy and replete to blog politically. I'll do that Monday.

Oh, and Happy Imbolc, all!