You’re STILL Wrong
or
Mykel's Blog for July 2021
To
answer brutality with brutality is to admit to one’s moral and
intellectual bankruptcy. --Gandhi
You
walk down St. Marks Place… the
plan:
meet some friends… a
drink at the Grass Roots…
talk
about old times... when St. Marks Place was PUNK ROCK.
Barely
registering… a
city bus
pulls over to the curb behind you. You hear it but only
as part of the city noise.
Then,
the
running footsteps... behind you… getting
closer.
You turn. A
massive guy…
running toward you… eyes filled with hate… like the
cuckolded man… on a TV crime-show…
running after the man
he
found boffing his wife.
He
gets closer. You put up your hands… show you have no weapon…
“let’s talk!” you want to say. No
chance...
PFAAACK!
the
crunch of his tight white knuckles into your jaw… a
loud CRACK! The
rest is pain… then nothing… blackness.
Here’s
real
scene: Seattle
2021.
A white
guy… mid-30s… balding, minor beard, slightly on the plump side…
stands on a street corner. He wears a black leather jacket. Another
guy, about a foot taller, same age, all in
white…
except for a black backpack. The bigger guy approaches the smaller
one… Shouts… it’s hard to hear what he says… The guy in the
leather jacket turns… look
of fear...
puts up his hands.
“Wait! Let’s talk,” say
those hands.
The
big guy moves closer. Cocks his right arm. KERPOW! Punches through
the smaller
guy’s
raised hands. Fist-to-chin… no comments... no
questions. BLAM! The smaller guy is down… slammed to the sidewalk…
nose first … knocked out... possible concussion… broken nose. The
big guy chuckles, sniffs… walks away.
The
YouTube video makes it to
facebook in a day. The reaction:
“Wow, that’s great!”
“I
could watch that over and over again… just terrific.”
“Wonderful,
just wonderful.”
At
least a dozen more of the same tenor... All
cheering the aggressor, booing the guy who puts his arms up and just
wants to talk.
Oh
yeah, the
guy in the leather jacket… the
one knocked out...
was wearing a red armband with a swastika on it.
Did
you switch? Were you horrified at the brutality of the aggressor,
then turned into his supporter?
You
don’t need to be in AntiFa to cheer this kind of hypocrisy… but
it helps. The
youtube
clip
claims
there was some SMSing. Somebody said that somebody said that
somebody said. No one said anyone was attacked… no one was hit…
no one claims brutality. This guy is floored on a rumor that someone
read while riding the bus.
FLASH
to 1980s New York:
A
pair of femmy young men walk down Greenwich Avenue from Sixth Avenue
toward Christopher Street. They laugh… gesture limp-wristedly...
stop and kiss each other in a gay parody of a Gone With The Wind
poster.
Comes
a voice from behind them. “Hey you faggots!”
Behind
them are a gang of New Jersey boys... in town for a little fag
bashing. They dive at the legs of the young men as if they’e going
to bite them.
FOP!
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
From
behind the Jersey boys comes a crew with baseball bats. SLAM to the
ribs. A Jersey Boy in shorts and a gray hoodie screams and sinks
down. SLAM to the knees… a tough jock falls to the sidewalk,
wincing in pain.
BLAM!
BLAM! BLAM!
The
bats keep going until the Jerseyites crawl away... back to the Path
Train.
When
I read about this I think:
“Wow! That’s great!”
“Wonderful,
just wonderful!”
The baseball bat group is SMASH,
Society to Make America Safe for Homosexuals.
Their Modus Operandi is
to send out a weak-looking, femmy,
pair as bait… and when the pair is
attacked… they strike
back... harder.
So
what’s the difference? How can I defend SMASH but condemn AntiFa?
Glad you asked and the answer is easy.
SMASH
attacked in defense of others who were physically attacked. The bad
guys bashed
in real life…. Not supporters…
not
rumors…
not history… not refusing to talk… but right there… watching
the attack like you might watch a neighbor beat his dog… and
do something to stop it.
The
anti-fa bashee? He
just wanted to talk.
Sid
Vicious wore a swastika on the cover of the My Way single. If that
were this century, those Anti-Fas would’ve been all over him…
probably with a baseball bat.
Your actions give others
permission to do the same things. If it’s all right for you to
punch someone who thinks differently from you… someone who’s done
nothing to you… why not the same for someone who is a different
religion from you? Or a different race? Or… the list goes on, but
you get it.
Punching
someone who has done no
evil that you’ve seen says
it’s okay to punch someone who’s done no
evil that you’ve seen.
My advice to
the Antifa lovers?
Watch
your back.
You’re
building an audience who, when it happens to you, will be
saying:
“Wow!
That’s great!”
“Wonderful,
just wonderful!”
When
someone catches you sneaking a burger at McD’s… you know, Meat
is Murder… you’ll get what you deserve. When someone texts
that you put your hand on some girl’s leg when she was
crowd-surfing at the punk show… It’ll be more than a hand on YOUR
leg. I’ll be tuning in to YouTube to watch the video.
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]
–>Even
The Governor Dept: Because
New York State
has reached a 70% vaccine rate, the governor has stopped
all recommendations for sidewalk masks and
relaxed
almost all mask mandates
in
other places.
Despite
this, almost half of New Yorkers still mask themselves on the street.
Stores and restaurants still ask people to mask up before
they go in.
And the post office is so confused, they have conflicting signs right next to one another. Why don’t the CDC-loving mask-wearers follow the CDC when they say fuggedaboud those masks?
–>Who
knew dept: Maybe
COVID has turned everything upside down – even the real estate
market. The Huffington Post
reports
on
a
Colorado house listed as being “a little slice of hell” with
“human and animal feces left in the living room to greet you as you
walk in.” It sold quickly for more than half a million dollars. I
wonder if you have to wear a mask to go look at it.
–>Sudden
realization dept:
I wish I had the reference. Maybe it was on Al Jazeera, the only TV
news I trust. Some professor is
talking about race and how what we see on TV and in the news forms
our images. She talks
about the dead people we see on
TV.
Bodies of George Floyd and Eric Garner... bodies
of war dead. They’re usually black. Remember that guy in Atlanta
who killed the Asian sex-workers? How many bodies did you see? Yeah,
that’s what I thought. If the victim is white… they show a high
school yearbook picture. Asian…
no pictures at all.
And
hungry people, starving bubble-bellied babies? What color are they?
Save the Children? What color children? We know anyone can be hungry…
and anyone can be killed, but what we see… what we’re used to…
are dead and hungry black and brown people. That’s
got to affect the way we think about those people.
Wow!
Never thought about that before.
–>
Honest
Cop Dept: NPR
reports
The
police chief in Sperry, Okla. wrote himself a speeding ticket after a
traffic camera caught him speeding. He says he's going to pay the
more than $300 ticket he wrote himself. Evidently, he was doing 80mph
in
a school zone. That’s
setting an example. if
more cops wrote themselves tickets, you
could have police forces that pay for themselves. Defund,
shmefund.
–>
Just
deserts dept: My
long-time pal Sid Yiddish found
this
interesting
tidbit. You know how vegans really hate vegetables and are always
looking for ways to trick bad-tasting food into tasting like meat?
Mock duck, veggie burgers, almond milk. Funnily enough, a veggie
company is recalling it’s fake eggs. Why? Because they were
contaminated. With what? REAL EGGS, of course. Oh, the horror!
→
Special
Thanks dept: And
call-out to Josh C. and Grue S. who put me up, and put up with me…
during my visit to Philadelphia. Both of the couple are friendly,
smart, and large… in the physical and personal sense of the word.
I’ve already written about my taste for fat people, their
self-confidence and (often) musical ability. When we say someone is
BIG-hearted, s/he often is a big person.
One
of the weird things I don’t get is… self-image. Do fat people
look in the mirror and think
I’m ugly?”
Do some fat people think…
I wouldn’t be ugly if I weren’t fat?
Grue is a spectacular AND beautiful woman! AND that fat is… er… a
huge chunk of the reason!
See
you in hell, redux,
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 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.
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 to 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.
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