Showing posts with label New York City. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York City. Show all posts

Saturday, October 02, 2021

Sad Song: You're Still Wrong: Mykel's October Blog

 

A Sad Song: You're Still Wrong: Mykel's  October Blog

 

You’re STILL Wrong
or
Mykel's 
October 2021 Blog/Column 
A Sad Song

by Mykel Board



There are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone. 
                                                                                  --Nicole Krauss

Staring at my picture book, she looks like Mary, Queen of Scots.
She seemed very regal to me, just goes to show how wrong you can be. I'm gonna stop wastin' my time. Somebody else would have broken both of her arms. Sad song, sad song. Sad song, sad song.
                                                          --Lou Reed

The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire.
                       – Lemony Snicket


It starts in that no man’s land between your belly and your chest. It’s a pressure… something on your diaphragm. You struggle to breathe...  your chest rises and falls in deep sighs. Slowly it creeps up… deep in the back of your throat… the spider in the old lady who swallowed a fly… then you feel it in your nose… your eyes… those little parts of your eyes closest to each other… wet… they fill ever more... soon you can’t see… you squeeze your eyelids shut... tears pour out... dripping down the side of your face… You look to the right and left to see if anyone’s watching you… Your nose runs. You wipe the tears… the snot… on your sleeve.

Sadness is inexorably… though understandably… linked with death. People cry when someone close to them dies. It’s the same everywhere. 

I ask my Kenyan pal, Albert, if men cry in Kenya. He says, “Sure, men cry when someone dies. It’s normal.”

Sometimes, we’re sad when people we’ve never met… but have admired… die. I cried when Thurman Munson died. I’ll cry when Jimmy Carter dies. Okay, got that. 

But there’s a kind of sadness that’s not about death. A kind of sadness that doesn’t reach up the throat… doesn’t end in the nose or the eyes... a kind of sadness that is like a giant press, squeezing your lungs… squeezing the air out of you… making you feel like shit for no reason except the sadness itself. 

FLASH TO THE SECRET KOREAN BAR; It’s above a deli on the corner. There are no signs for it… you just have to know it’s there. You enter through the deli, walk up the unmarked staircase in the back and POW! There you are. 

I’m walking up those stairs right now. 

“Yeoboseyo!,” I shout from below. It’s Hello in Korean, but only for answering the phone... never as an in-person greeting… except by me. 

“Mykel!” shouts Jenny from upstairs… behind the bar. 

“How’d you know?” I shout back. 

When I get upstairs, Jenny has poured me a mug of Hite beer. She pushes it over the bar to me as I sit in front of her. 

Andy, an ABK (American Born Korean), hangs out in the bar and is a friend. 

“Andy,” I shout at him from the other side of the room. “Come and sit next to me. We’ll talk. Have a Hite!”

Andy sits on the next stool. “Mykel,” he says, “nice to see ya! I’ve been feeling like shit for the past week.”

“I hope I didn’t make it worse,” I tell him. 

It takes him a second. Then he laughs. 

“How’s the deli job?” I ask. He works at a Korean deli, chopping salad, preparing the take-it-weigh-it-and-pay-it food that Korean delis invented. 

“You know, chop chop,” he says, his right hand making a fake karate move. “So close to Grand Central, lots of tourists and businessmen. Not my favorite people.”

I talk to the bartender, “Jenny,” I say, “give Andy a Hite on me.” 

She pours him a beer. “Mong chung eeee” we say in a fake toast. (It actually means You Moron!) 

“You look unhappy,” I tell him. “Did something happen today?” 

“Something happens every day, Mykel,” says Andy. “When I look in the mirror, I feel like shit. I want to cry. It’s….”

“Huh?” I say, nearly choking on the beer, “You’re a smart, good-looking guy. I wish I saw what you see when I looked in the mirror.”

He smiles halfheartedly… and puts the tips of his index fingers at the edges of his eyes. 

“See these? Slanty eyes!” he says. 

“Come on,” I say, “you speak perfect English… Well, I mean you tawk like a New Yawka.”

He looks at me… very close… fixing his eyes on mine. Then he says… very slowly and very LOUD.

“WHEN… PEOPLE... SEE... ME... THEY... TALK... LIKE... THIS... LOUD... AND... VERRRRRRY…. SLLOOOW. THEY... EXPECT... I... CAN’T... UNDERSTAND…” He speaks, staring directly into my eyes projecting  profound pathos.

“But…” I start.

“You don’t get it, Mykel,” he says. “I know you. Sometimes you play the outsider, the one who never fits… but you CAN fit if you want. I have no choice… I’m ALWAYS the outsider… always the foreigner… no matter how American I am.”

He slaps his own cheek. “I hate my face. I hate being born this way. And sometimes it feels worse than ever...”

I feel a giant press, squeezing my lungs… squeezing the air out… making me feel like shit for no reason except the sadness itself. 

My adventure with Andy took place at least 15 years ago. But all these years later, the sadness still creeps up on me when I think about it.

FLASH TO NOW… RECENTLY: TVs, newspapers… The New York press is filled with… stop the press. A restaurant worker is assaulted… cellphone videos prove it… punches traded… three against one… all girls… a catfight. 

What happened? The worker politely asked for COVID vaccine proof. It’s required by law, you know… can’t eat inside a restaurant without your Covid-card. And for that she gets punched? For that, she’s wounded and has to be saved by patrons pulling the evil Texans off the helpless young lady. 

New Yorkers know that Texans are violent anti-vaxxers who don’t care if the whole world comes down with the plague. Just like them to attack a helpless girl only following the law… doing her job. 

It’s all too pat. The video shows the attackers are black women. The attackee is invisible. Facebook is alive with posts… those evil Texans. Not only do they want to make the rest of us sick with their no-vaxxing, but they attack a hostess who’s just doing her job. 

The news always describes the attackers as Texans. The minions… especially the New York minions… some of the most conformist people in the world… build on the anti-Texas outrage. Ted Cruz… Trump supporters… No respect for other humans... They only love guns and their version of God. 

Looking at the rage in the three black women… looking at the reports with no comments from the attacking side… Seems as clear as a knee on the neck that there’s an unreported racial side to this. 

How could you say that Mykel? They’re from Texas. They just want to kill people… unless those people haven’t been born yet, you know, fetuses… They’re the only ones with a right to life… get it? haw haw haw.

BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP! The news unfolds… the waitress wasn’t white. She was Asian. The attackers were all vaccinated. They were being pestered a SECOND time to show their proof… Did someone else’s cellphone catch the word Niggers among the crowd… the staff? 

Yes, I was right. I should be happy. I should be shouting I TOLD YOU SO from the top of the Empire State Building… dancing naked with a suck this you dumb New Yorkers sign hanging from my penis. 

But I don’t feel that way at all. Instead, I struggle to breathe...  my chest rises and falls in deep sighs. Slowly it creeps up… deep in the back of my throat… Being right makes me sad. The news: all lies… the people… my friends… true believers of those lies. So sad.

Some movies are called tear-jerkers. Usually chick flicks, they’re structured to make the viewer cry. I remember one called Once Were Warriors… a New Zealand story about the Maori. I cried at that one and then was pissed off at myself for being manipulated into tears. Now that I think back on the movie, I realize I cried from the film structure, not from sadness… like I laugh at Moe, Larry and Curly. 

Tears can come from pain, laughter, anger, frustration… as well as sadness. Sadness can only come from reality… from the realization that something is really wrong. 

There are people in the world who don’t feel the sadness…. who aren’t aware of the pitiable pain of our lives… who watch the TV news and are outraged… but not saddened. That, in itself, is sad. 


See you in hell,

Mykel Board

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.  Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

–> The Way Out dept: 



Seems to me, when the government requires creative people to be creative for those they don’t like, the answer is to do lousy or offensive work. This web designer doesn’t like homosexuals? Ok, make a website where every click on every link will bring you to queerbait.com. You want to prove a point by hiring someone who doesn’t approve of you? Have your gay wedding cake with an icing picture of a little boy impaled on a devil-dick. It’d serve you right.

–> My kinda school outing dept: Mass Live reports: Students in Boston rode a party bus, complete with a stripper pole and neon lights, on a school field trip. Why? There’s a national school bus driver shortage. They have to take what they can get from private companies.
Eleventh grade Language teacher, Jim Mayers tweeted about the experience on Sept. 17.
“It is a funny story, but there actually is a real bus shortage and it speaks to major flaws in our education system,” said Mayers. “This in no way is a reflection of anyone involved in planning the trip. We were trying to have a fun day with the kids and that’s exactly what happened.”
I say: the only way to top “a fun day with kids” in a stripper bus with poles and neon… is to have actual strippers. 

–> Rising rents dept: The LA Times reports that a family owned crypt with neighbors Hugh Hefner and Marilyn Monroe is taking bids for a luxury deathplace. Bidding starts at $2 million for the no-bedroom… er… flat. 

–> Shaving lifespan dept: CNN tells of published research that says that eating a single hot dog can take 36 minutes off your lifespan. Joey Chestnut, one of my few heroes, has won the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest for the past several years. He estimates he’s eaten more than 19,000 hot dogs. He’s not dead yet, but the clock is ticking faster than for most people. If he’s buried next to Hugh Hefner, I might visit him one of these days. 

-->Speaking of Death Dept: I just wanted to give a sad nod to the death of Michael Evans... long time ARTLESS drummer and drummer around town (God Is My Co-Pilote, False Prophets, and a ton of others). One of the few people who switched easily from punk to avante garde to jazz to Afro-Caribbean... and just a great guy. 


See you in hell, redux, but I expect Evans will not be there to greet us. He's jamming with Ginger Baker.

MB




LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.


Here's a start:

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.

And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links here... and he promises a new issue soon.

George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information. 

And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here

Here's a few video links.


And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong. 

Jim Testa moved his long running zine, Jersey Beat, to the blogosphere awhile back. You can read it here.  Jim also recommended a kind of unique album… in a style you don’t see too much of these days… or any days. Neo-Hassidic Rock Opera. You can stream the album here

Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both. 

My long time pal, Jim Hayes rightfully complained about my leaving out his blog. He’s a great writer, so it was a tragic omission. Here it is. 

Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here

Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com

Tuesday, September 01, 2020

You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's Sept 2020 Blog #1 or INC. YOU!

 YOU'RE STILL WRONG.. 


MYKEL'S SEPT. 2020 BLOG

VOLUME 1
OR
INC YOU!


by Mykel Board


Think about George Orwell's two-minutes hate from the novel '1984' and how that left everyone sort of exhausted and able to live their boring humdrum lives. If our lives are going to continue being unfulfilled and boring, perhaps we do need some sort of short-term violent chaos incorporated into them, to make them more palatable. --Chuck Palahniuk


Bebop and hip-hop, in so many ways, they're connected. A lot of rappers remind me so much of bebop guys in terms of improvisation, beats and rhymes. My dream is to see hip-hop incorporated in education. You've got the youth of the world in the palm of your hand. --Quincy Jones


Once upon a time, there was a king who had a ruby ring… but the ruby was scratched. A single line… down the middle of the jewel. The king called on all the grinders and polishers in the kingdom to remove the scratch. None could do it. An etcher approached the king. “I can fix your jewel,” he said. The king shrugged. No one else could do anything. What’s to lose? The etcher etched a rose into the ruby. The scratch became the stem of the rose. – Fairy tale told me more than once by my one-armed father.


Maybe it’s the Jew in me. Whenever I get one of those mailings for a FREE SUBSCRIPTION to anything… as long as I don’t have to pay “a fee” or “for postage and handling”… I’m there!

Flash to 1975. I’m living in my new apartment on 90th Street on the Upper East Side. The Ruppert Beer Brewery on Third Ave disappeared ten years ago. A few ugly new buildings appeared in the rubble. The neighborhood is “changing.” I live in a railroad flat that used to house brewery workers. These tenements are called railroad flats because the rooms are all in a row… one into the other... like cars on a train…no hallway. You just go through... room to room.. until you get to yours.

In the mail… in a kind of corporate hip envelope… comes an offer to subscribe to INC. magazine. It seems like it’s written for budding entrepreneurs. I’m as budding as a blade, as entrepreneurial as Mahatma Gandhi. I am slightly more Jewish than Gandhi… and it’s 6 months FREE!

I send in my Sure, sign me up reply card… and before I know it, I get this magazine of people whose American dream is an office with big windows and nothing on the walls.

I can’t tell you one thing I read in that magazine. I can’t give you an iota of an idea inspired by that magazine… but I come back to it now, because I’ve come to LOVE the idea of incorporate.

On my couch for a month is Gavin Mendonca. We met in Guyana… where he’s from. Gavin has been touring the jungles of Guyana to learn indigenous music and INCORPORATE it into rock. He calls it Creole Rock.



It’s a shake and bake of everything together. Sure there are punk purist. Race purists. Libertarian purists. Homo and het purists. And those guys are missing out on something… something? Everything!

[Aside] For me, jazz is like toenails on a blackboard. I’m not talking about Dixieland Jazz with clarinets blowing music from old cartoons. That stuff makes me smile. I love it.

I’m talking about a quartet where every instrument is playing a different non-tune… they fight each other for a while… then one instrument screeches a solo… the audience applauds… then another instrument screeches a solo… more applause… then they fight each other with rising volume, until it’s over… and the audience applauds even more loudly.

I’d rather listen to Josh Groban than listen to that.

FLASH TO RIGHT NOW: Here I am, at a free (okay, okay, I know) outdoor concert. Locals from the neighborhood sit on folding chairs set up in front of a makeshift stage. A little boy, about 6 years old, and his sister, about two years older, run frantically back and forth in front of the stage as little kids are wont to do.

The group I came to see plays Zimbabwean music, with authentic African instruments… all the players are white. They’re quite amazing. Nora, the woman who invited me, has spent a long time in Africa learning the music and the culture. I love the way it looks... like Elvis singing “that black music.”

After them, come a jazz ensemble: guitar, synth, conga drum, bass. As they play, the little kids stop running back and forth. They look at the musicians on the stage. They freeze for a bit, then they walk. Not wondering, but heading right for the stage.

The boy stops in front of the drummer… a big black guy with a huge chest and arms like baobab trees. The boy watches him pounding a rhythm on the edge of the drum. Then the kid starts pounding… whacking away… on the other edge of the drum. I wait for someone from the audience to pick the kid up and take him off stage. No one does. Then, I wait for the drummer to brush the kid aside, maybe using a leg to push him away. It doesn’t happen. Slowly, the band incorporates the kid’s wild drumming into what they are playing.

Meanwhile, his sister is fascinated by the guitar. She sits in front of the guitar player, and watches him screech up and down on the fretboard. Occasionally, the musician steps on a pedal to add distortion, wah wah or some other effect. The foot motion draws the attention of the little girl. She watches the dance of the pedals. Then she reaches for the little knobs on those pedals… and turns them…. playing with them like they’re a toy. Turning one, twisting another, doing two at one time.


Does someone from the audience come to claim the little monster? Does the guitar player use her pedal foot to kick away the juvenile vermin? You guessed it. No! The guitar player and the entire band incorporate the freakish sounds into what they’re playing. They work around it... building on it... using it. I’ve never seen anything like it.

When they finish, I come away still not liking the sound of jazz… but loving the hell out of INCORPORATION.

- end -

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com

Guyanese Incorporation Dept: You can hear some of Gavin’s fine work at these places. First, a Kaieteur Falls video where he sings in Patamona, an indigenous language. Then, a YouTuber with Sugar Cane, a multi Caribbean punkrock band incorporating everything! And finally a mixed version of a traditional Guyanese folk song.

My kind of humor dept: Reuters reports that ever since Covid-19 reached Cuba, a tall cardboard box with arms and legs totters around a Havana suburb, popping into the bakery or butchers, or browsing the newspaper stand.

This is Feridia Rojas, 82, who decided to build and wear mobile housing to shield herself from the virus.

“I am at home, what about you?” reads a message on her box, a nod to Cuba’s government slogan “Stay at home.”
82 years old???? Yes! It gives me hope.

Duh dept: The Washington DC health website has a special page on sex during the panic. On the page they list various sex acts and how they can spread the disease. Among their tips:

  • Kissing can pass COVID-19. Consider not kissing anyone you do not know or who you are not sure has been isolated for 14 days.

  • Rimming, or any sexual activity that involves putting the mouth on the butt/anus, might pass COVID-19. The virus has been found in feces.

  • Condoms and dental dams may reduce contact with saliva or feces during oral or anal sex.

  • masturbation is always safe sex.

Apparently, these guys don’t cruise the internet enough. You can read the whole cringeworthy report here. Masturbation ISN’T always safe sex.


 


--See you in hell!



LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:


I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.


Here's a start:

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.

And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.

George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.

And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here


Here are a couple video links.

This from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low

And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.

Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both.

Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.


Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com



Friday, July 05, 2019


Mykel’s Post-MRR Blog
Number ??? July 2019
Johnny Pissoff vs 
Mykel Pissed-Off
by Mykel Board

FLASH TO 1968: The Fugs release one of their greatest albums: It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest. On that album is a song called Johnny Pissoff Meets the Red Angel. I don’t really understand what it’s about, but I love the name. Johnny Pissoff! I can see him… dressed in black… wearing a fedora-- like Dick Tracy… walking into any room… just his personality making people clench their fists and want to get up and leave.

FLASH TO MARCH 2019: The facebook message comes from some guy named Gary. I never met him in person, and don’t know anything about him… except he likes NO FX, “but I never wear shorts.”

Hi Mykel, starts the message, your columns lately, I donno, they seem like retreads. I’ve been reading you since like 1942, so I guess I’ve got more on you than most. But what I want to know is what is it like being Mykel Board. I mean, what are your days like. What do you do in ordinary time, when people are just driving to work or walking down the street? These days, you just write about politics, but I can get that anywhere. Please, Mykel, be punk again.

FLASH TO JUNE 2019: My long-term pal and Jersey Beat editor, Jim Testa, is talking to me. Jim has become a regular at our salon at the Algonquin... with Dorothy Parker. Dorothy is quieter than she’s known for being. It might have something to do with being dead. The rest of us take up the slack.

Mykel, says Jim, your columns lately, I donno, they seem like retreads. I’ve been reading you since 1942, so I guess I’ve got more on you than most.

“Okay Jim,” I answer. “I’ve heard this before. What do you want? You want me to be punk again?”

“No Mykel,” he says. “I want you to surprise me.

Wow! An interesting pair of messages… and honest too. I guess I HAVE been just treading beer lately. So maybe I should chronicle a day or two in my life. Maybe that’d be punk enough for Gary…. and surprise Jim.

But allow me one paragraph of opinion.

OPINION: Fat asses never look good on guys. On gals, they’re unpleasant when they bulge from the sides, like a deformed peach. They work wonders when they protrude from the back, coming out 3-D like one of those Gambian koras-- an instrument that look as beautiful as it sounds. Those master-asses make you want to nestle your face between the folds, and dig your pink oral organ deep… forcing the sphincteral flesh to tighten around your eager tongue.

FLASH TO MOST ANY DAY ON A NYC SIDEWALK: The three young women walking slowly ahead of me all have the width-- not the depth.

The cliché is that it’s only the tourists who creep along NYC streets...the time-obsessed locals maneuvering behind them… trying to pass to get wherever the fuck they need to go.

That’s not true in 2019. It’s not only tourists. It’s every one with a fuckin’ cellphone who walks slowly on the NYC streets. And here are three of them… walking ass to ass… leaving no sidewalk space to get by.

I come up behind them.. breathing loudly… panting. It doesn’t help. Their ears are plugged white with some Apple doodad that frees them from the responsibility to watch where and how they’re going.

I rest my hands on the nearly touching shoulders of the two girls closest to the street. I press slightly… to separate them.

They turn towards me… simultaneous what the fuck expressions on their too-made-up faces.

“You left half an inch for someone to pass,” I say. “If you spread out just a bit more, you can have the sidewalk completely blocked.”

The three girls shirk back, as if I’d asked them to look at my penis.

I pass between ass number two and ass number three and continue walking.

On the subway now, I stand, having given my seat to some geezer even older than I am. It’s only a 20- minute ride anyway. I can read my H. L. Mencken standing up.

“GRAND CENTRAL STATION!”

Time to get off the train.

The doors open. The crowd outside the steps forward. Two guys in particular, both young… jockish… wearing almost identical blue business suits… one with a navy tie with Greek letters… the other a black tie with small yellow polka dots…. push their way into the car before those of us leaving can leave.

WAIT! I shout at them.

They turn to look at me.

“Fuck you,” says the one with the Greek letters on his tie.

They’re the kind of macho muscled men that give both Wall Street and heterosexuality a bad name.

“Look,” I say, “Just because you can get married now, doesn’t mean you have the right to push people around.”

I watch his eyebrows come together until he figures out what I’m talking about. By then, I’m outta there.

FLASH AHEAD: The scene is K-Mart. I’m here to buy a cheap alarm clock. Mine broke when I was trying to set it while drunk., It slips from my hand… plunges from my sleeping loft to the hard wood floor below… smashes to plastic shards. I’m here to buy a new one. My self-imposed spending limit is $10.

A colored girl, in a red and white t-shirt is patting the blankets at the bottom of the escalator.

“Excuse me, Miss.” I say, “could you tell me where the clocks are?”

“I don’t fuckin’ work here,” she shoots back. “And I’m a MISSES, not a miss.”

She huffs off and I feel like shit.

I wander the aisles looking for clocks. A guy in a suit… light grey with fine black lines through the material… bright white shirt... a black tie with LV and those kind of symbols all over it in brown. I didn’t take a picture of him, but I found a similar one on the internet:



He’s in his early 20s with one of those haircuts that you see on posters for BUSINESS SOLUTIONS. carefully parted, trimmed-- like he gets a haircut every day… one lock precisely dripping on the forehead, saying I’m suave. He reminds me of a slightly more sophisticated version of those two guys who pushed past me on the subway.

No idea what he’s doing here. Maybe he wants to see how the 99% live. Maybe he’s just getting a snack for the train to Scarsdale.

I walk over to him and tap him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Mister” I say. “Could you tell me where the clocks are?”

I wish I had a picture of the look of horror in his eyes. But it makes my day… certainly makes up for the faux pas with the red t-shirt girl-- at least in my Johnny Pissoff mind.

LUNCH TIME: Flash to SWEETGREEN… an awful vegetable-oriented (pleonasm?) restaurant. They billboard advertise all over the city with close-up pictures of teens with something green stuck between their teeth. I’m eating here because I feel I SHOULD. I don’t want to die from lack of lettuce.

I’ve got my salad ordered at the counter. Someone mixes a bunch of green stuff together and hands it to me. In order to make it half-palatable, I ask her to throw in some chicken. Maybe I mishear, but I could swear the salad makes a TSK TSK when I ask for the chicken.

I carry the bowl of salad from the counter to the cashier… who looks a lot like the woman I mistook for a K-Mart sales lady. She rings it up. “That’ll be $14.85,” she says.

I fix my face in a way that tries to show I’m used to paying $14.85 for a salad. I pull a twenty from my wallet.

“I’m sorry,” she says, looking not sorry at all, “we only accept Visa, Mastercard, or American Express.”

“What the fuck?” I say, finally losing it. “I have 8 credit cards here, but I’m not going to give you one! You know what credit card only means? It means that new immigrants who don’t have bank accounts yet can’t buy your $14.85 salad. It means that people on the lam from ICE… people who don’t want to leave a paper trail… can’t buy your $14.85 salad. it means that people who hate banks, who don’t want every transaction to be processed for a fee that goes to Chase or Citibank can’t buy your $14.85 salad. It means that cash, paper currency LEGAL TENDER (I speak those words in capital letters) is no good in your shop. I’m outta here.

I walk out, leaving my $14.85 salad on the counter.

Sometimes, I wonder what it is that creates the need to piss people off. Of course, that’s what punk is all about, but punk didn’t create the need. It WAS CREATED by that need. As time passes and the facebook world makes is easier and easier to piss off and be pissed off… the world does not get any punker.

Of course, those of us who live in America live under the punkest president ever… but-- even then-- I’m still not sure I get the whole thing. I’d like to look at it up close. Examine piss-offedness under a microscope. What is it? What does it do? Are there different kinds of piss-offedness? Is there good piss-offedness and bad piss-offedness?

Ben Weasel, who is no slouch when it comes to pissing people off, once said that I don’t intentionally try to piss people off. It is simply the fact, says he, that I so strongly believe in what I do, that the inevitable result is people getting pissed off. Those aren’t his exact words, but the meaning is close enough.

I donno.

I don’t try to piss off people… at least not people who are poor or those who have enough of the world against them already: cripples, the chronically depressed, those working shit jobs for shittier wages, the homeless. Sometimes, though, I can’t help it. That cashier in Sweetgreens was probably a minimum wage working poor. I wish there were a way I could piss off SWEETGREEN without pissing off the poor shlubs who work there. Let me know if you find one.


ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email to god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: 

Mykel Board
POB 137
New York, NY 10012-0003.



If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group: 


-→Shoot if you’re sad to be gay dept: Philippine President Duterte made a speech to Philippine expats in Japan. In that speech he said that he “used to be gay” but cured himself with the help of several beautiful women. After his marriage, Duterte said “I hate handsome men… and now prefer beautiful women.”

Forty Days Dept: This Week magazine reports that the owners of a full-scale replica of Noah’s Ark are suing their insurance company for rain damage. The arc is connected with the notorious Kentucky “Creation Museum.” The owners claim they didn’t get enough money for the damage suffered by the arc from recent “heavy rains.” I have no comment-- except a smiley face-- on this one.

Fact is funnier than fiction dept: Congressman Devin Nunes filed a $250 lawsuit against Twitter for making fun of him. The reason? A tweet said “the Nunes cow” was “udderly worthless and it’s past time to mooove him to prison.” In 2017, Nunez Nunes co-sponsored a law called the “Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act.” It did not pass.

Pimp yourself dept: I’m rebuilding my LINK CONNECTION database. If you have a cool blog, or newsletter, or something else with a URL, let me know (even if you’ve already done so). You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. If I like it, I’ll link to it and let you know. Then you link to mine and I’ll link to yours. It’ll give us both two extra points in the Google search engine. Send the link via email to god@mykelboard.com

See you in hell,
MB

Friday, December 27, 2013

Mykel Pulls the Ole Switcheroo Mykel's Post MRR Column Number 5

YOU'RE STILL WRONG
POST MRR COLUMNS
POST MRR COLUMN NUMBER 5

by Mykel Board

or Mykel Pulls the Ole Switcheroo

There is another elephant in the room we're not discussing: racism and how it's putting our entire society at risk when it comes to mass shooters. If a black kid was pulling knives on his family and threatening their lives, just how fucking long do you think he'd be allowed to remain free, walking among us until he finally snapped? If a black kid made people as uncomfortable as Adam Lanza did, would he make it to 20 years old and a mass shooting of an elementary school before people FINALLY deemed him dangerous? Black kids can't even listen to loud music in parking lots before they're perceived as threatening, yet somehow white kids like Adam Lanza go their whole lives with excuses being made for them before they finally snap and kill dozens. --Comment on a blog post about the Sandy Hook school killings



It looks like an anus. It's pink and the size of a baby's fist. In French Guiana, they call it a pomme rosa. I don't know what it's called here in Suriname... maybe a Suriname apple. I sit here in Paramaribo, munching on one, deciding that it indeed tastes more like an apple than an anus. Eyes closed, tongue only, I would've guessed anus on the lick, apple at first bite. On the other hand, if I started on the BACK of the fruit, I would only guess apple, without anal influence.

Sometimes, what it takes to understand something is to put in the switch. Take the back for the front, the top for the bottom, the apple for the anus. The same switcheroo works in human relations. You'd get a whole nother understanding, if you substitute black for white. Gay for straight. Old for young. Jew for Goy.

For this column, I focus on race. It's something I've been thinking a lot about recently, and it's all I have room for.

Take gun-control... please. My long-time readers know I oppose gun-control. Background checks are worthless, as most of the notorious (mainly white) school killers have no criminal backgrounds. Most murders committed with non-stolen guns are done by first timers. Background checks-- like permanent sex-offender registrations-- are just another Big Brother invasion that makes it impossible to simply serve your time and be over with it.

I've written before that American violence comes from a culture of violence. A place where standing up for human rights means killing people... where protecting American interests means killing people... where the solution to every international problem means killing people. It's hard to imagine that people in such a society would solve their problems any other way than by killing people. Guns don't kill people. AMERICANS kill people.

That said, there are those who just don't get it. They want to ban semi-automatic weapons. Have background checks. Make it harder to get a gun than to get a car. (Guess which one kills more people.) With ideas as un-American as that, these people don't get very far... but they could. There is a strategy that would have Americans chomping at the cheeseburger for gun-control.

Here's some fuel for the other side: I want to teach them how to promote their point of view. How to achieve gun control quicker than a hundred full-page ads in THE NATION. I'm not afraid to reveal this technique. I have nothing to fear. They never listen to me anyway.

So what is the amazing gun control method? You guessed it, buckaroos. It's the SWITCHEROO-- aka RACE CHANGING.

Here's the plan. A bunch of black guys buy high-powered assault rifles and go out to the hills of Montana... er better make that Tennessee. The uniform is the old Black Panther one. Black beret, red sweatshirt with a clenched fist on the front, and a panther on the back. They practice target shooting with target cutouts of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. They do two hundred push-ups... run 20 miles... every day. They develop tight military skill, become an army. They call themselves the Trayvon Militia.

POW! You wanna see how fast there's gun control? Mitch McConnell introduces it the day after the NY POST runs its exposé. The NRA calls for MORE restraints on gun ownership, just like they SUPPORTED gun-control during the Black Panther era. If folks want to bring back that support, all they have to do is bring back the Black Panthers... or something like them. Every Dixiecrat and Tea Partiyer will be hiding under the bandwagon until congress controls those weapons.

SCENARIO TWO: It's a typical day under Michael Bloomberg. In Midtown, the tourists and the businessmen mingle in la-de-dah appreciation of the new New York. New skyscrapers. New bike lanes. New rich people. The only cop to be seen is the smiley-faced woman directing traffic around the new blocks of tar in the middle of the street... closed to cars and renamed PARKS. It's all part of Bloomberg's Greening of New York.

But in Brooklyn, in Brownsville-- called Blacksville by the locals-- things are different. A group of black teens has just been visiting their schoolmates. Friends hanging out in the projects. Get together, listen to music, talk about girls. As they leave the building, they hear, “Alright, freeze.”

They are not afraid. It happens all the time. A cop, shorter than they are, night stick hanging from his belt, speaks the words. The kids know the routine.

“Hands up against the side of the building. Spread your legs. Look straight ahead,” They stand next to each other. Hands against the building. The cop frisks up and down their legs, making sure to press against their balls, then their ass, then front pockets.

“What's this?” asks the cop, feeling around in the front pocket of one of the boys.

“It's my wallet,” says the boy.

“Take it out,” says the cop, “slowly.”

The boy removes the wallet and hands it to the cop. The cop opens it, rifles through the ID section, comes across a couple condoms.

“You use these a lot?” he asks.

“Not as much as I want to,” answers the boy.

The cop doesn't laugh.

It happens... happened dozens of times a day. Called “stop and frisk,” the theory is that if you make it likely that people will be stopped on the street, then they won't carry weapons or drugs. It'll make the streets safer.

Of course, it is unconstitutional. The fourth amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires a warrant supported by “probable cause.” But because these guys are black, the constitution doesn't matter. White folks tell them “it's for your own good,” like a parent excusing the beating of a child. “It makes your neighborhoods safer,” they say. But the people who actually LIVE in those neighborhoods don't think so.

So, what's the cure for Stop and Frisk? Easy. The old switcheroo!

Now we're in Times Square... across Broadway from that stupid billboard-screen that shows live video of people across the street. It's a huge collective selfie. A massive ego display of people wanting to see themselves on video, looking at themselves on video.

A vacationing couple from Japan makes peace signs. They jump up and down pogo-style to locate themselves on the display. They hear, but don't understand, a voice from behind them.

“Hands up against the side of the building. Spread your legs. Look straight ahead,” it says.

The tourists don't understand English, and have no way of knowing the cop is talking to them. They continue jumping and snapping pix.... until they're tackled. Somewhere there's a scream. The man's head hits the ground. He lies now with shattered glasses.

“I said up against the side of the building,” shouts the cop.

The couple struggles upwards. The cop pushes them against the building, grabbing wrists and ankles to position them correctly. When frisking the man, the uniformed one pushes his hand hard between his legs. The crowd, now gathered around the pair, gasps as the man doubles over in pain. The cop forcibly straightens him up.

After the frisk and some passport showing, the cop walks away. He meets up with another officer further down the street.

“I always look for the Japanese,” he tells the co-cop. “Remember that sneak attack in Pearl Harbor... you can never tell.”

Meanwhile in Wall Street, cops push stock brokers and bankers against the wall, examining pockets and suit jacket linings for smuggled insider trading information.

“You can never tell,” says Mayor Bloomberg when challenged. “Those stockbrokers and bankers caused a lot more pain than any mugger. We gotta keep 'em under control. Make 'em afraid.”

The Japanese government protests. There is a sit-in on Wall Street. The brokerage companies occupy themselves. In a week, Stop and Frisk is stopped. For everyone.

SCENARIO THREE: Okay, you've heard about the Knockout Game® Origins unknown, it came to prominence here in New York when a slew of Hasidic Jews... including woman and children as young as 12... were attacked. The story goes that the motive is a game... a kind of contest among young black guys. See who can knock out the Jew with one blow. Pow, s/he's down. You hit twice, you lose. So here's the switch:

An older colored lady, grandmotherly, walks with a cane down the streets of Crown Heights... the borderline district. She's alone on a Monday night. Slowly, she goes forward on the sidewalk. Cane-tap, step, step. Cane-tap, step, step. A big SUV rounds the corner... the windows dark. It passes her and turns right at the next corner. Cane-tap, step, step. Cane-tap, step, step. The woman begins to feel uncomfortable. She pulls closer to the buildings, just hugging the porches as she walks from one to the other in her slow march home. Cane-tap, step, step. Cane-tap, step, step. The street is silent except for the low hum of an approaching car. It's the same car... the same SUV that passed her before.

This time it stops. The side door opens. Eight or nine young men get out. They're white men, wearing long black coats, curly sideburns, and yarmulkes.

“My turn! My turn!” yells a particularly large young man, as he approaches the woman. In the young man's grin, the woman sees the space of a missing tooth. It's the last thing she sees before the approaching knuckles rip into her face, sending her reeling to the ground. She loses consciousness and smashes her head on the sidewalk before she can hear the joyful yells of “I DID IT! I DID IT!” She dies on the way to the hospital.

Al Sharpton, who's already criticized the black-on-Jew version of the Knockout Game®, is up again. “This has got to stop!” he says. This time, Rabbis and Black Ministers agree. There are marches in Jewish and Black neighborhoods. Huge posters appear with KNOCK IS SHLOCK on them. Mayor De Blasio's Afro-ed son is photographed tongue-kissing a rabbi's son. We are the World re-enters the Top 40, and The Game is over.

[NOTE: These days, I can't write fast enough to outrun reality. As I type these words, an email appears from Social Reader. It reports on an alleged attack by Hassidic Jews on a solo gay black youth. From the report it isn't clear whether this is a case of “reverse knockout” or your run-of-the-mill gay bashing-- or even a complete fraud. Who can tell in these days of charges and counter-charges thrown at the speed of Twitter? So for now, my solution is only a fantasy. We'll have to wait for larger numbers before we see if it works.]


ENDNOTES: [You can contact email me at god@mykelboard.com. Postal contact (send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else-- legal only) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003 If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Just join the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

--> Crossover dept: I'm (too slowly) writing a travel blog of my last trip. But I did want to mention that bands who want to tour in South America might start in the Guyanas. A promoter contact in Suriname is Jerry Orie, PINNACLE GROUP, Commissaris Weythingweg 142b Paramaribo SURINAME (+597) 462-830 jeroie@hotmail.com Jerry is a great guy, and if he can find a spot for you, he will. His tastes run to the metal side of punk, but he's open-minded to everything except shit.

--> Pat Buchanan gets it right dept: Over at Antiwar.com, arch villain, Pat Buchanan, absolutely nails it with his analysis of Al Qaeda and America at war. Like Ron Paul, this guy who's awful at domestic policy-- the epitome of the worst of paddle your own canoe-ism-- is right about foreign policy. Here's a sample quote: Is it not time to put al-Qaeda in perspective and consider whether our Mideast policy is creating more terrorists than we are killing?

In 2010 America lost 15 citizens to terrorism. Thirteen of them died in Afghanistan. The worst attack was the killing of six Americans at a Christian medical mission in Badakhshan Province.
Yet, in 2010, not one death here in America resulted from terrorism. That year, however, 780,000 Americas died of heart disease, 575,000 of cancer, 138,000 from respiratory diseases, 120,000 in accidents (35,000 in auto accidents), 69,000 from diabetes, 40,000 in drug-induced deaths, 38,000 by suicide, 32,000 by liver disease, 25,000 in alcohol-induced deaths, 16,000 by homicide and 8,000 from HIV/AIDS.

Is terrorism the killer we should fear most and invest the lion’s share of our resources fighting?

--> Blowing my own department: I think I posted this before, but I'm too lazy to double check. Early in 2013, I guested on Blag Dahlia's radio show RADIO LIKE YOU WANT You can hear the interview here.

--> Internet boiling dept: As I write this, America seems embroiled in such sensitivity overkill, that anyone of any notice is virtually gagged. The latest is some actor in Duck Dynasty. It's a show I've never seen (I don't have cable), and am not particularly interested in. Evidently, the show's star gave an interview to GQ magazine... on his own time. In the interview, he gave non-liberal views of gay life and race relations. POW! He's fired... only for saying what he thinks. The guy loses his job for speaking... off the job.

This kind of firing/banning-- he's the latest, but there've also been Howard Stern, Imus, and a ton of others-- reminds me of the McCarthy era studio blacklisting of lefty actors . Neither case was government censorship. Both were just as effective. My pal, Jim Goad, wrote about it. It's a good read, though he doesn't mention McCarthy. Maybe this switcheroo didn't work. Too much time in between and one side forgets about the other.

UPDATE: OH NO!! Again, before the ones and zeros are dry on the screen, A&E reinstates the Duck guy making me agree with a critic who thinks the whole thing was a publicity stunt from the get-go. 

--> Keeping the pressure on: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a Bring Mykel Back concerted effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll. He forwarded me an answer to a letter MRR printed where the editors excuse my firing not as censorship for content, but because I “refused to answer letters in the letters section.”

That is wrong. I only asked that I be allowed to say I don't LIKE to answer letters there. I feel it's unfair to the letter-writer for the columnist to always get the last word. If they want me to answer there, I will. SO, here I'm publicly agreeing to abide by their rules. Here it is in ones and zeros. Their reason for my being censored disappears.

I hope you'll cut and paste the paragraph above into an email, and send it-- along with your comments-- to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com with the subject line: BRING MYKEL BACK. Let me know how they answer.

-end-



BANG! YOU'RE DEAD!, or You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's Januaray 2025 Blog/Column

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