The Fragile Ecosystem Of My Bathroom

So, I came home the other night. And… how can I put this? I’d had a few. And then they got lonely, so I had a few more. Have you ever seen a drink separated from its friends? It’s like watching an angel cry. Then I walked home from Sunnyside at 3 AM, because that’s just how I roll.

First thing I did when I walked in the door at 3:08 (I can walk *very* fast when drunk, and really I left the bar at like 3:06 to boot, like Michael Johnson) was get in the (gold shoes) shower, despite my somewhat altered state of consciousness. You see, my dream has always been to be killed in a completely avoidable household accident, like Dave Matthews. (Hopefully, I mean.)

And when I finished toweling off, I very nearly got my wish, because there was a cockroach crawling around the sink. And not one of those friendly cockroaches from Song of the South that sing and dance and grant the wishes of lonely wooden dolls, no, no, not one of those motherfuckers. This cockroach was twenty-two inches long. It needed a haircut, badly. It bumped up against me, dropped its sunglasses, and said I had to pay for a new pair, cash. It said it could get me tickets to the Today Show. It cast racist aspersions on me for not helping out. Three days later, I saw it on the subway saying it was an Iraq veteran and selling Snickers for $1.50 out of a bunch of boxes held together with mailing tape. Then it breakdanced with its five-year-old brother. This was a total sociopathic motherfucking cockroach.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve seen me when I’m the worse for liquor, but I get jumpy, friendo. I sprinted out of the shower. My lovely co-blogger will testify that I actually stacked a bunch of books against my bedroom door while I slept, lest the clever creatures follow me the forty-one feet from the bathroom and come to my room while I’m asleep and lay eggs in my goddamn mouth.

This sort of thing stresses me out slightly.

The last time I saw a roach, I’d just woken up. It was about three inches long and it crawled out of my line of sight so quickly — and I was so unable to find it — that I wrote it off as a hallucination. And it’s okay to ignore them. Roaches are a vital part of living in New York, like worrying about terrorism and eating $6 egg sandwiches every day. Like power outages and subway strikes. You can forget about them for months, even years at a time, but they’re there. Oh, yes. The roaches are still there. They’re hanging out in the 1/8″ gap between the sink and the wall, demanding 32% wage increases and delivering rolling blackouts whenever the temperature breaks 80. They’re the rent-controlled tenants of the bathroom-kitchen boroughs. They are fucking everywhere and all I want to do is go to sleep without thinking about tiny legs on my face. Goddammit.

Wet Hot American Sellout

I started blogging today strictly because I wanted to use that title. But also I want to talk to you about McCarren Park and what is becoming of it.

McCarren Park, if you don’t know, is the epicenter of all Williamsburg and Greenpoint leisure. It’s a giant, unpleasant, treeless park littered with cigarette butts and dog crap. It has an all-weather track, an astroturf soccer field, a Hasidic softball team, and is now completely surrounded with giant luxury condo towers. It’s a hipster promenade: people put on the absolute dumbest things they own and strut around with their ironically named dogs. (Some good ironic dog names:  “Meow”, “Ceci n’est pas une chien”, “Capitalism”, “Michael J. Woof”)

What’s that? You want more pithy commentary? Well, there’s seven ice cream trucks there, nineteen hours a day, and they never turn the goddamn sound off. When they passed that “shut the ice cream trucks the fuck up” law last year, these trucks straight up cranked that shit up until it bumped, my friend. That’s how the bootleg Good Humor man rolls. Bling bling, and watch out for children. Also there’s a bunch of women that don’t speak English selling sickeningly sweet fruit ices, and they have bike horns on their carts to alert you that they’re now standing within a couple miles of you. This is to protect us from silence, which is one of the top ten problems facing New York. Right up there with “way cheap”, “too polite”, and “subways insufficiently crowded.”

The park is tres complicated and fun, in other words. And the gem of McCarren is the McCarren Park Pool, which is a big abandoned pile of bullshit that you aren’t allowed into ten months of the year. Here’s a brief history [NOTE: this is mostly mythology at this point]:

• 1935 - Robert Moses bulldozes some tenements or something and builds a pool.
• 1950 - The pool is popular. People swim in it.
• 1969 - A bunch of Puerto Ricans move to Williamsburg and have the audacity to use the pool. In a furor, the grumpy Italians and Polish demand that the pool be immediately abandoned and destroyed by weeds. The city gives in, because back in the day the city was a huge racist, and apparently also didn’t realize that Puerto Ricans could vote.
• 1998 - A bunch of hipsters move to Williamsburg and start using the decaying corpse of the pool for free concerts.
• 2005 - The concerts are getting really popular.
• 2007 - Some genius realizes that if they charge $50 for the concerts, they won’t be fun anymore, so Clear Channel immediately starts doing that. Bayard Street becomes jammed with Hummers.
• 2008 - Grumpy Italians and Polish (now joined by the 1960s Puerto Ricans, who have grown old and are annoyed enough with hipsters to join the “angry” team) realize that the concerts and events are popular and fun. In a furor, they demand that the venue be turned back into a pool, at tremendous expense, so nobody can enjoy it ever again. The city gives in.

Trust me. Robert Caro said so.

So, as a result of all this helpful political activity, this is probably the last summer of events at McCarren. Then they’re going to turn it into another gross New York swimming pool, complete with the pervasive urine and gunfights. [NOTE: People love killing each other at public pools in New York. I blame RENT.] In the meantime, though, there were a few awesome events left this summer that didn’t cost money.

First there was the Hold Steady concert, at which thousands of people were left outside a locked gate on Lorimer Street while the band played, during a thunderstorm. That was pretty hood. I took the bus home.

Then there was Wet Hot American Summer. Let me be clear. This wasn’t a bad event. It was well-attended. The people next to me sat there smoking cigarettes, talking loudly on the phone (”I’m at the pool! In the outer boroughs somewhere! What? No, I’m watching a movie! What? Yeah, there are lots of weird people here!”), and generally indicated how they were just way too cool to enjoy the movie. But hey, I wouldn’t have moved to Brooklyn if I didn’t want to put up with massive douchebags all the time. So I put up with that. Michael Showalter and Paul Rudd arrived and made funny.

Also, the guy from the L Magazine showed up. “L” (get it? it’s the name of a rad train and I guess it sounds like Elle, that’s clever) fancies itself a hipster rag, but the man was wearing a power tie. He had a combover. He asked us to, quote, “give a round of applause for the Scion.” He helpfully informed us that our fun was being sponsored by Brooklyn Brewery (cheer), Greenpoint Wines (faint, snootier cheer), and Starbucks (crickets). And Scion.

[P.S. Scion has also taken over Adult Swim. Maybe somebody should call Scion and tell them that nobody in the 18-24 demographic will ever buy a new car. "Hey, guys, they don't sell Scions at thrift stores or Old Navy. Yes, really. Uh huh. Stay classy, dudes. OK. Thanks for all those unpaid marketing internships."]

At this point, walking the six blocks to Williamsburg is like going to a sponsored funeral. Have you been to the American Apparel? It’s right next to Sea! Across the street from the Pad Thai place! No, the other one. No, the red one. They have great egg rolls, I think. The pallbearers were brought to you by Pepsi. That’ll be $74.99, special bereavement rate. Smile for the brochure.

But hey, man, pretty much all 8,000 hipsters showed up to see the movie and be mocked by Michael Showalter. It’s nice to see a little community. And the DoubleShots were free! Let me tell you, I can’t wait to drink Colt 45 in the kiddie pool with all you jackasses next summer. 25 cents off park admission if you buy a condo. Now with authentic grit!

I’m Running For Mayor

Here at Smackdown HQ, things have been decidedly sedate lately. Probably it’s the heat, or the fact that our air conditioner, if one person is in the room, keeps the living room just cold enough that you can sit in it comfortably if you never move. So we’ve settled into a sort of summer hibernation (like a regular hibernation, but opposite). Stumbling home, dripping with sweat, exhausted, our hair held on mostly by duct tape at this point, sitting on the couch for a few cartoons, then waking up at 8:45, still on the couch, and realizing there’s no time to shower.

Well, anyway, let’s spice this shit up. As you may or may not know, next year is an election year, which means our wunderkind mayor will be forced to leave office. Or Manhattan will secede from the boroughs and elect him mayor-for-life; that wouldn’t surprise me either. Still! There’s going to be an election, and without Our Man Bloomy in the running, let’s have a quick look at the contenders and their pitches…

Helen Marshall
“I was on All In The Family”

Christine Quinn
“Let’s be fair, I may be corrupt but you haven’t had a lesbian mayor yet”

John Castidimatis
“Hey, electing an unattractive billionaire worked last time”

Marty Markowitz
“Good Shabbos! Oh, fuck, I’m not supposed to be in a car.”

Tony Avella
“I fear teenagers and change”

Ray Kelly
“Vote for me, I’m fucking terrifying”

Betsy Gotbaum
“My name used to be Betsy Flower… no, really”

Fernando Ferrer
“Uh, Zach, I don’t think I’m actually running this year”

John Liu
“I promise to be the worst mayor ever”
“Also, this is the only known photograph of me”

What a good-looking group of people. Problem is, they are all fucking horrible. Where are the crackpots? Where’s Christopher X Brodeur? I’ll tell you where. He’s in prison again. (Right?) So I am forced to become Christopher X Brodeur.

ZACH FOR MAYOR

My platform is simple:

• Rent is free
• More bars
• More bars in more places
• Free beer
• Outlaw running for mayor by people who are not me
• Pancake breakfasts delivered by helicopter
• Word “hipster” outlawed
• Subway is free, and flies through the air
• Declare war on Philadelphia
• Secede from United States
• Become part of Peru, for the sweet oil revenues
• Every third building demolished, just for yuks
• Central air… everywhere
• Verify that Peru has oil

I’m like Norman Mailer 1967, but I haven’t beat my wife yet. Vote for me… or be destroyed!

America Day Is Not A Holiday Here

Fourth of July! The day when New York reminds America that while America is 232 today, New York is about six thousand years older. At least, that’s what it looks like in my subway station. Also, those rumors about alligators in the subway: totally crap. The dinosaurs would devour them, like that.

But yes. It’s turkey day! America turkey! Everyone’s happy! The Post runs pissy columns questioning the patriotism of their enemies! There’s camraderie! It’s a hundred twelve degrees out and the sky is overcast with this horrible glowing white color that makes everything look awful!

Bonus: After the show, the city turns into Night Of The Living Dead!

THE FOURTH OF JULY!

My best instincts told me not to go to the waterfront. It’s what I’ve done every year in the past. Go to McCarren Park, I said to myself, and settle for the somewhat crappier view from the middle of the football field. But, of course, I didn’t. I just got on the subway and went to the Brooklyn Heights promenade, about an hour before the show.

And it wasn’t bad! There was space! I was happy! But as the crowds pile in, your view of the skyline slowly transforms into your view of the ass, and your newfound sense of community slowly evolves into a wish that everyone would just go the fuck home, you realize the truth — all public events in New York suck, all the time, no matter what. You thought today would be the exception — the first exception since 1880, when it is rumored that the Gentlemen’s Haberdashery Faire was pretty fun. The Long Islanders behind you are trying to figure out which of the downtown skyscrapers is the Empire State Building. (Hint: None of them.) Yeah, a good time. You were wrong. Again. The thing about New York is that you are always wrong.

Montreal, Montreal, Death, Montreal

Note: This was only a week ago, it wasn’t snowing.

Time To Go Northward! 54′40″ or Fight, we shouted, and we got into the car. It was Montreal time. Like Benedict Arnold, we were going to Montreal. More likely than not, to burn that shit down. (We also considered betraying the US in September 1780 and eventually settling down in London to die at home, disgraced, in 1801. You know the way these trips tend to shape up.)

Our friend Eric lives in Montreal, in a giant exposed-brick duplex townhouse apartment that costs something like $350 a month (P.S. Eric, I hate you). Every year for four years, except last year and the year before, we’ve driven up to Montreal to sleep on his floor and debauch, debauch, debauch. Is “debauch” even a verb? It doesn’t matter, because I bet it is in French.

Quick directions to Montreal [oh, you thought the Smackdown didn't do lists anymore, didn't you]:

1. Get a car.
2. Put like $150 worth of gas in the car.
3. Drive north until your eyes glaze over.
4. If nobody’s speaking French, turn right and drive until they are. If you hit the Atlantic Ocean, you probably should have turned metric left, which is Canadian for “slightly to the right.”
5. Get really, really drunk.

Montreal is a special place, and it has a very special dark side to match. It’s a place where everyone is good looking, but bars are, terrifyingly, full of fifteen-year-old girls who flirted their way in using French. This is how Montreal works. It’s a beautiful city that has approximately eight trees, total. It has like three million people and maybe eight of them are friendly. Prostitution, gambling, and murder are legal*. A very nice mountain park. Two strip clubs for every inhabitant. They speak this special dialect of English where every word is accentuated by rolling your eyes at passersby to indicate how annoyed you are to be speaking English. There’s a thriving culture and music scene*. It’s fun*.

* Probably.

But let me tell you something about this trip: Montreal was not any fucking fun. One experience to sum it up: Parched, we wandered helplessly down Avenue Mont-Royal, looking for something to quench our thirst. A parade of people was walking in the opposite direction, all eating delicious-looking ice cream. We stopped one of them. “Where did you get that ice cream?” She shrugged her shoulders. Uninterested? Trapped behind the language barrier? We tried again in French. “Où avez-vous trouvé la crème glacée?” She looked at us like we were crazy. We would have tried the good old-fashioned language of saying what-the-fuck really loud, but instead we all ended up sitting on the lawn in front of a metro station, trying to hash out the details of a suicide pact. Nobody ever wants to be the last one in a suicide pact, that’s what I learned. And 4 PM is too late to start.

I learned a lot of other things, too. I learned that when your friend crosses the border without a passport, they will not necessarily be cavity searched. Not both ways, at least. I also now understand that the duty-free shop sucks. Bonus conversation:

Customs officer: So what do you guys do for a living?
Me: I’m a computer programmer.
Matt: I’m unemployed.
Tom: Yeah, unemployed.
Rob: I’m unemployed at present.
Customs officer: Huh. Well, you know, Homeland Security is hiring.
Everyone at once: (uproarious laughter until we all, slowly, realize that we’re laughing at this guy’s awful job)
Customs officer: Uh huh, have a good time in America. Drive on the right side.

Hey, in the “pro” column, Homeland Security guys get to live near the border, and you know what that means — you too can be treated like shit in a foreign country, anytime you want! Plus: government salary! Cha-ching! Jenga!

How I Am Going To Ruin Every Fucking Party I Ever Go To In Brooklyn, Ever Again

Alright, hold up a sec. Put down whatever you’re eating. Forget about all that My Family Is From The Deep South, Boo Hoo Motherfucking Hoo bullshit for just a second. After spending the better part of my weekend digging through old newspapers and family records (shut up, my life is unspeakably exciting usually), I found something surprising — relatives in Brooklyn!

“Pretty cool!” I said, out loud, and promptly shushed by the attractive archivist. (On topic: I’ve yet to meet an archivist that wasn’t twenty-four, with thick glasses, semi-hostile and bizarrely good looking. Time to get my MLS!) I scratched down a couple of unfamiliar looking street addresses and resolved to look into it later.

And I did. And they’re in Bushwick. Bushwick! Not even a nice part of Bushwick! Do you understand what this means? The absurd bizarre legitimacy this bequeaths me? I can only imagine my newfound conversational leverage:

Oh, hi. You moved to Bushwick three years ago? Nah man, that’s cool, cool, y’know, I got here in uh, 1858. It was sort of lame then, though, that’s why we moved to some shithole upstate town and stayed there for about a hundred twenty years. Until the yuppies took over. Yeah, man. Brooklyn, right? Now I live in Greenpoint, whatever, yeah, cool, you know, there aren’t so many paved roads and shit. Wanna buy me another drink?

Jay-Z thinks it’s badass he grew up in the Marcy projects… but they demolished my family’s house just to BUILD the Marcy projects! So that must have been an improvement! God knows what it was like. I heard my great-great-grandfather sold crack out the back his Escalade, although records from that era are, of course, inconclusive at best. Wood Escalade, bitches!

Anyway, I’m sure the past was exactly like today, what with the prosperity and silly outfits and $8 beers, although every single member of my family is listed in 1880 as “Laborer in hat factory.” Ironic hats? Somehow I doubt it. But whatever, man, I’m sure lofts were cooler when you couldn’t turn the lights on. And I don’t have to tell you how much cleaner the subway was, back when it was a horse.

Are We Dead?

Nope! But I’ve gone off to Montreal for several days, and Honor’s still going to work, the sucker! But the updates are visible on the horizon. If you put your ear to the ground, you’ll hear the sound of their hoofbeats. If you’re also an Indian.

NOTE: Indians never do this, it was put in movies to trick you. If your ear is to the ground, horses will trample that shit. Word up. See you next week.

Across The Sea

Not so long ago, I found out I was a Dutch citizen! In addition to being an American citizen, I am now Hollandaise like Eggs Benedict, my friends. And you know that that means:

That’s right: it means you are a racist.

In all seriousness, there are a lot of benefits to dual citizenship. For example:

1. Being treated suspiciously at airports
2. The opportunity to pay more taxes
3. You can blog about it, like this
4. Europeans are not asked or expected to see “The Happening”
5. Extra taxes
6. Wooden shoes… you racist
7. Taxes

There are downsides, though. For example, if I get bored, I can just move to Spain. That sucks. And America has its charms: Big Macs, war, terrifying social conservatism, your choice of Dakotas or Carolinas…

Another downside: Amsterdam is the damn devil. I may be the only American in the history of the city of Amsterdam to travel there in order to specifically not sleep with prostitutes or smoke unfiltered marijuana, or buy Marijuanette gum, which I guess helps you quit. I was the American that showed up, tried to speak Dutch to everybody (failed), tried not to spend $6 on a slice of pizza (failed, TWICE), refused to go to the Van Gogh museum, and got unbelievably pissed off. When I ended the trip, I’d been sitting in Schipol Airport for seven hours because I was too angry at Amsterdam.

Still. I am learning the language (”Excuse me hello sir can I purchase a ticket for metrotrain backwards Amsterdam with happiness?”). I have a little button on my web browser bar that tells me when the flights are. And I live in New York, which used to be called New Amsterdam, duh. And “Brooklyn” is Dutch for “Brueckelen”, an old Dutch word meaning “City where everyone gets a stupid haircut or becomes ostracized.” And “New York” is a Dutch word too, but you don’t even want to know what it means.

When The Real Bill Clinton Comes Back

Quick political minute: WTF happened to Bill Clinton? Do you know? Does anyone? There’s something missing from the air, and it’s the sound of alto sax! And soprano sex! (Gennifer Flowers might have been a tenor, I don’t care)

Remember when Clinton could turn the world on with a smile? I’ve been that world. My brother had leprosy, but Bill Clinton touched him and now he is an astronaut. One time Bill Clinton said the word “Middle East” by accident and nothing blew up for nine whole months, anywhere. My mother had a goiter the size of a baby’s fist, but Bill Clinton came along, and do I even have to tell you what happened?

That’s right. Astronaut.

But lately the magic is gone. Bill Clinton just sorts of walking around looking pudgy and sweaty and insulting people and saying awkward things. Good presidents don’t say awkward things! Good presidents paint my house for me! Hell, even George Bush painted my house for me, but then he only made it halfway up and got bored. I gave him a glass of lemonade, but he fell asleep on the lawn. He snores like a motherfucker. Where was Bill Clinton? Not helping me out in my time of need, that’s for sure.

So what the hell happened? Was it the move to the suburbs? The gimmicky Harlem office? Not being president anymore? None of these things, my friends. There is only one explanation.

Bill Clinton has been replaced by a sophisticated robot. You don’t believe me? Look at his stiff motions. His lack of charisma. One time he referred to his daughter as a “fork” and his wife as “Other Robot R-662-A-B.” Those were enough to make me suspicious.

So I took action. Dressed all in black, I snuck quietly into the recess behind the podium at an underattended rally and made my way to the former president’s side. I whispered into his ear. What happens next should be obvious: I made Robot Bill Clinton explode, simply by saying the special command “notnilC lliB.”

Where’s Arsenio Hall to save us now? Oh, that’s right, there no longer is an Arsenio Hall. But never fear! The real Bill Clinton will arrive shortly, in a spaceship, hovering in a beautiful pillar of pure light. He’ll raise his hand and say “I did not say all those things about Barack Obama,” and we’ll all have a lively discussion about what “say” means, and then we’ll sort of just not fight in wars for ten years. And I’ll get a job that doesn’t involve knowing how those frozen hamburgers that come in a box are made. (Hint: It doesn’t make you want to eat them.)

Things I Don’t Want To Do This Weekend

I’d prefer not to step in anything, so it’s best if I don’t walk anywhere in Greenpoint. And if at all possible, I don’t want to get on the L train. Leaving the house should be optional, if it’s allowed at all. Have you been outside the house? Everyone’s wearing makeup out there. It’s inhumane. The other day I was sitting on the subway while a guy who basically looked exactly like me sat there painstakingly applying blush, using the window as a mirror. And I’m not talking about casual blush. I’m talking Las Vegas in summertime.

If I learn any new slang this weekend, I’ll be seriously pissed off. I’ve been saying “Man, it’s really hot and noise” for days and people keep sidling away from me. I don’t want to turn the air conditioner off, ever. I also don’t want to sit in front of the air conditioner until all the moisture leaves my body and I die. Don’t laugh. It’s happened before. In my past life I was sort of a dumber version in myself and that’s how they took me down. Although I don’t feel like believing in reincarnation right this sec.

I don’t want to go to Union Pool. Last time, some guy blew smoke in my face and spilled a beer on my shoe at the same time. He was wearing a sport coat, and not ironically! What, you didn’t have time to change between work and 11 PM the next day? The PBR is like $4, that’s ridiculous. A six-pack shouldn’t cost more than three bucks. In fact, all beer-related activities are out. And all the hard liquor in my fridge has been there since high school. Midori and orange-flavored vodka, anyone? You can chase it with somewhat soured milk!

Cafe Grumpy sucks ass for some reason. A week ago there was a girl sitting in the corner, reading a book with a cigarette in her mouth. You can’t smoke in coffee shops, but that girl was definitely letting me know: sometime in the next two hours, she was planning on smoking! Thanks for the heads-up! Coffee makes me jittery and nervous anyway, I’m already way too on edge. I don’t feel like cooking but all the restaurants are way too expensive; I’m trying to save money here. The grocery store is closed anyway and the roaches finished off the last of my cereal.

All the blogs are too depressing, and if I use my laptop my lap gets way too hot, so I can’t even check my email over and over. I refuse to read a book. Besides, if I lie in bed my head hurts, and the couch is filthy. The only comfortable way to read a book is on the subway, and I think I mentioned that I’m not getting on the subway. I won’t ride my bike, either, the tires are flat and there’s too much stuff in my closet for me to find the pump. I don’t get why nobody is calling. OMGWTF.