leap before you hit the bottom

I have the pleasure of working for one of the oldest institutions in Union Square, and I say that with absolutely zero eye roll or forced, insincere sentiment!

Family-owned Paragon Sports has been in operation since 1908, which happens to be the last year my precious Cubbies took home hardware. The building itself was probably erected long before that date, though a half-dozen Google searches yielded no further information on the subject.

Within minutes of my hiring, an unshaven fellow in the basement informed me that the store's “New York City Historical Landmark" designation (at least, I think those were the words he used) renders the owners impotent in all matters of renovation, even though the crumbling infrastructure demands attention. In other words, they have to leave the building as is, no matter what. Is this true? I have no idea! Let’s just assume Person X knew what he was talking about. Best not to worry my pretty head. I believe everything I’m told.

Two weeks ago, pinned between a wobbling dolly and two outrageously heavy golf club displays, I risked it all on the engineering marvel that is our freight elevator. The car lurched and stalled and groaned in unnatural ways only thirty or so times between Floor 3 and Floor 1, but no matter! Just a common malfunction, I’m sure. Someone upstairs probably took care of it. I pity all the stiff suits on Madison who ride clean, modern, polished elevators with little to no fear of death or serious bodily injury! This is the Big, Bad City, man! Toughen up or get the hell out! While we haltingly banged our way down to Floor 1, I envisioned an undesirable scenario and set to ruminating. If we plummet to the basement, I decided, I’ll leap right before the point of impact. Just might save my life. Ah, New York living. It’s grueling! Lol!

And then there’s the sagging, malnourished stairs that lead to the warehouse. My God, but aren’t they a work of art? Every time I ascend those balsa planks, their violent, downward slope to the left brings a chuckle to my eye and a tear to my mouth, and throws off my equilibrium. I’m safe, I tell myself, lips not aquiver. I’m safe, I’m safe. I’m safe. Seeing as Paragon is a legitimate business that cares deeply for their employees, I’m certain the building’s safety inspectors investigate the stairwells on a weekly basis to ensure our well-being. No need for worry!

I really can’t stress enough just how proud I am to work in such an impressive, historic monument to capitalism. And retail. My coworker on the first floor tells me that Andrew Johnson shopped here, once. I’m gonna blindly put aside everything I know about the space-time continuum, open my mouth all the way, and go, “whoooa.”

When the ceiling drips, as tends to happen during heavy rains, the maintenance workers do exactly as you’d expect and staple crude, plastic tarps around the leaks. One must marvel at their ingenuity. Why offer a permanent solution when Band-Aids will do just fine? Twice a week some dude with a vacuum gets up on a ladder and sucks out the brown and purple water. Situation diffused!

I’ve had a nosebleed for four days and everything around me smells like paint, even when I’m not in tennis department, which is receiving a second coat as I type this. Today my urine came out blue. Probably just a chemical imbalance, or something. I’m sure I’ll get over it.
...

tonight's top ten list

My iTunes library boasts a mere 2,813 songs. Another 8,000+ tracks rest peaceably on an external hard drive, which--barring some unforseen circumstance--will not be fraternizing with my current playlist anytime soon. Due to severe memory restrictions on this laptop, I allow only DJ-worthy (a.k.a. upbeat rock) songs onto iTunes. Sorry, John Lennon’s Solo Catalogue.

Care to hear which 10 are the most played? I’ll now list them in order, with a brief explanation (excuse?) for their appearance on this exclusive register. Please keep in mind that just over a year ago I accidentally deleted my iTunes library, thus erasing all facts and figures from the “play count” category. That unfortunate mishap will certainly skew the numbers. Many former darlings are nowhere to be found, though back in their heyday they garnered more listens than the current crop. (Since accepting the DJ gig, I've sought out music I wouldn't otherwise entertain.) Also note that I suffer from undiagnosed ADHD, a condition which renders some longer faves--David Bowie’s “Station To Station,” for example, or Sigur Ros’ “Flugufrelsarinn”--ineligible, because a song must be played through in its entirety to count as a full “play.” I often listen to music only until it satisfies my immediate urges, then move swiftly and purposefully (purposelessly?) to the next selection, sometimes cutting three or four minutes early when another track’s bright, ostentatious plumage catches my eye.

Anyway, here’s the rundown:

1) Gang of Four--“To Hell With Poverty” (42 plays) Classic post-punk. What a song title! Although Gang Of Four certainly propagated the punk ethoses of irreverence, vicissitude, and maniacal energy, their unhinged jubilation set them apart from many acts that preceded them. I played this snot anthem at numerous DJ gigs before noting that none of the clowns at the bar care for/about Gang of Four. Whatever. I’ll keep ‘em to myself. Your loss, brah.

2) Blur--“There’s No Other Way” (38 plays) Catchy as hell, and uppity enough in the BPM department to sustain interest. Less obvious than Blur’s safe “Song 2” (speaking as a DJ), this track proves far superior, qualitatively speaking. Everything about the song--hooks, chord changes, vocal delivery, guitar work, pacing--is flawless, and if I could understand what the hell Damon Albarn was saying, I’m sure I’d also find the lyrics satisfying, enlightening, emotionally cathartic, and grammatically correct. Since debuting this one back in early summer ’09, more than a few people have approached the booth after the song concluded to inquire about the artist and/or track name. Maybe I’m doing something right? (See vid below.)



3) Empire Of The Sun--“Walking On A Dream” (38 plays) Thanks to Kate Maxwell for introducing me. When “Indie” and “Dance” join forces in a cotton candy way I usually get pissed off (see: MGMT, Passion Pit), but Empire Of The Sun craft a pretty solid pop song. Check out “We Are The People” from Walking On A Dream, the band's 2009 album of the same name.

4) Kings Of Leon--“Sex On Fire” (33 plays) I’m not proud of this one, but sometimes the frothy, barking masses demand mediocrity, and it’s my duty to provide. I’m hard-pressed to name another band this taupe that's gained comparable levels of mainstream success. Maybe Coldplay? Yeah, Coldplay. Ok, that wasn’t so hard after all. (For the record, I like a few Coldplay songs. They’re boring, yes, but sometimes quite pleasant and easy on the ear.)

5) The Rapture--“House Of Jealous Lovers” (29 plays) Don’t get me started. How perfect is this song? To go further: How perfect is this BAND? They’ve been on near-constant rotation for more than a few months.

6) De La Soul--“Say No Go” (27 plays) “Say No Go” borrows quite heavily from Hall and Oates’ “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do),” which lends this song--er, to be accurate, I suppose I’m addressing the band--even more cred than I was originally willing to grant it. The Bird and The Bee recently recorded a Hall and Oates tribute album which was reviewed by one of the NYC weeklies or biweeklies I read (L Magazine? Village Voice?), and now I’m cranky because I can’t find the article, which suggested that it’s actually ok to praise Hall and Oates without winking because refined listeners no longer write them off as an ironically regarded novelty act, and have rightly concluded--at long last, and after years of snubbing--that H&O are legitimate pop craftsmen who deserve serious consideration. This has nothing to do with De La Soul, of course, but everything to do with justice.

7) Electric Light Orchestra--“Surrender” (27 plays) Righteous song from the 70s that changed absolutely nothing (come to think of it, it never even appeared on an E.L.O. studio record) and will soon be forgotten, which is a shame, really, because for my money it’s one of the most listenable songs to emerge from that decade. I have no idea what it’s about, nor do I care. It’s just pop perfection. Period. Give it a listen:



8) Beck--“E-Pro” (26 plays) Eh, whatever. It’s loud enough, fast enough, and hip enough (Beck’s cool…right?) to appease the Happy Hour crowd. Ergo, 26 plays.

9) The Roots--“The Seed 2.0” (26 plays) “The Seed 2.0” incorporates--quite well--every hip genre of the last forty years, which is why it makes my end-of-decade list for Best Tracks of the 2000s. No question.

10) The Libertines--“Vertigo” (24 plays) Haha. How did this one sneak on the list? I'm kidding, of course, because here we have another near-perfect pop song. It's easy to chuckle at Pete Doherty and his persistent drug problems on those rare instances we Americans encounter OK! magazine, but the man is a musician first and a pale-faced junkie second, as evidenced by the first two Libertines records. "Vertigo" has 24 plays because sensible human beings will always respond to non-pretentious rock and roll, especially if the edges are frayed and somewhat asymmetrical. The people have spoken.
...

shame on you, mike lupica

Every weekday, with few exceptions, I purchase a copy of the New York Daily News from the corner store for $.50. Seeing as I rarely plan out anything beyond the turning of the hour, you might say this seemingly innocuous newsstand stop marks my last white-knuckled tie to routine.

New Yorkers who choose to read a physical, tangible newspaper on their morning commute are not without options. Off the top of my head, there’s The Wall Street Journal ($2.00) and The New York Times ($2.00) for those who want “real news,” and The New York Post ($.50), the Daily News ($.50), amNew York (free) or Metro (free) for those who prefer their news watered-down, sensationalized and/or easily digestible.

I endorse the News. Though this tabloid lacks intelligent, comprehensive, properly grammatorial coverage, it makes up for those pesky shortcomings by providing conveyors full of hot, gossipy sump, intelligence-insulting pseudo facts, and poorly-notated graphs of dubious legitimacy that serve to complicate issues that weren’t even issues until the News ran out of story ideas. When not engaged in a verbal pissing match with the Post to determine who is the greatest $.50er in town, the News gleefully stamps tales of human folly on front and back page, thus suckering suckers like me out of my quarters, because who among us doesn’t love a good scandal?

Perhaps my favorite News articles are those penned by Mike Lupica (right), a dastardly man who holds the singular distinction of being the worst columnist to ever boast a byline. Lupica, a “writer”/commentator who addresses both politics and sports, struggles mightily with the basics of the English language and pontificates from his Pulpit Of Authority on all matters, though he doesn’t appear to know the first thing about basic political stratagems or even the infield fly rule.

To illustrate Lupica’s ineptitute, I’ll now post a sampling of sentences pulled from his political column in today’s News:

“Young was on ‘20/20’ with Bob Woodruff the other night, telling us all about it, telling about how he protected a liar like Edwards with lies of his own, and now wants us to pin a medal on him because he’s got a new house that needs financing.”

“Sometimes politics seems to be a parade of guys like this, an endless parade of lightweights and phonies and horny, aging adolescents, to the point where you imagine the whole thing with floats, like it’s the Macy’s parade on Thanksgiving.”

“What Edwards did to his wife, who he is, that will never be funny.”

Each of the above examples--especially the last, in which he errs three times in a fourteen word sentence--demonstrate Lupica’s irresponsibility in all matters commatic. Those little curlicued devices are not your personal plaything, dude, and they don’t give you license to lazily mash unrelated or semi-related thoughts into a directionless mega sentence. The English language doesn’t work that way.

Cut the bullshit. Man up. Take pride in your column, and quit relying on airy, weightless repetition (“…telling us all about it, telling about how…”) to fill white space.

Perhaps it’s time to stop stating the obvious. Your “columns” reveal nothing new. Simply regurgitating existing news stories does not a column make. YOUR purpose at the paper is to take those news stories (which have already been--duh--reported) and COMMENT on them. Drawing comparison between a string of recent political scandals and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (?) accomplishes nothing, and frankly makes your work appear all the more sophomoric.

You’re probably all wondering why I read the News if I’m clearly dissatisfied with the quality of its content. Fair inquiry. In response, I’ll say only this: At 9 in the morning, I value light entertainment over heavy news. Given my predilections, News>Times. Though the News won't offer any insight into, say, U.S. relations with Japan, I'm sure to find a few half-baked celebrity quotes to get me through breakfast.
...